An Evil Blonde and a Friendzone Virgin
by sortasamtastic
Summary: In which Freddie's debating his future, Sam's circling the drain, and growing up is just as heinous as it comes. A misguided love story about figuring out the hard stuff and meeting people along the lines of halfway.
1. Chapter 1

_I can tell that we are going to be friends._

— _The White Stripes_

* * *

"You fucked me," A girl, completely new to my knowledge, had her hands on her hips in a truly feminist, girl-power, lesbian sort of way. All eyes were on her and him, completely going from apathetically conversing what was for lunch to becoming a dedicated listening audience. "You _fucked _me, David."

The David in question was lounging back in his cafeteria seat, legs propped up onto the table, fingers laced behind his head. He was smug. "Who are you again?"

"Lindsay Walters," She crossed her arms, tucking a piece of hair behind her hair. I couldn't help but notice her voice dropped from confrontationally high to pathetically low in a matter of seconds. "From Lenny Oliver's party last week?"

Nodding, David, slowly recollected whatever happened that night at that party, then realized what public situation he was in the middle of. Not wavering, he sighed. "So I fucked you. Big deal?"

Lindsay scoffed, raising confidence in this exchange. She put her hands on her hips, a truly overcompensating dyke attack stance. "You _used _me!" She feigned tears, using her palm to hide her tears, but mostly to hide the fact she probably wasn't affected by this in the least. "You said you loved me!"

"I used you?" He repeated, chewing on this with a slightly humored grin. "_You _spread your legs for _me_. Unless, of course, you're accusing me of rape." Lindsay's jaw dropped, obviously appalled and without an argument. "And as for the whole love thing, I love two things. ESPN and pussy." Mr. David-Nice-Guy looked up at her burning red face with a dazzling smile. "Don't get insulted if all you do is fit under one of those categories."

She clearly lost her attempt to score fifteen minutes of fame by being the latest victim of quarterback golden boy David Crawford's sexual prowess. Without any legs to stand on, she took one step forward, reaching out, and landing a clean, audible slap across his face. The crack of skin on skin rang through the quiet lunch room, and anyone who was not paying attention to this confrontation in the first place was paying attention now.

And I gripped my peanut butter sandwich, watching the events of a situation I would never be in the middle of unfold right in front of my eyes. I was living vicariously through a pathetic lesbian and an asshole. Sighing, I took a bite, suddenly at a loss of interest at the latest scandal. My friend Gibby sat across the table, noticing I wasn't captivated by the show anymore. "What's wrong, dude?"

"Nothing," I shrugged, peeling the crusts off my bread, balling them up and stuffing them into my Ziploc baggie. Knowing Gibby was my closest guy friend, he wasn't going to drop it, so I came up with a half-assed lie. "Made a pretty bad grade on Parker's history test, it's not that important.."

"Hm," Gibby spooned mashed potatoes into his mouth, nodding. "Right, right. The history test that Mr. Parker said we wouldn't be getting back until _after _this weekend."

Well darn, he caught me. Not bothering to cover it up, I took a casual swig from my water bottle. "Well, whatever. Nothing's wrong."

"You sure?"

"Sure as sugar."

"Well, in that case," Gibby let in a breath, wiping his face on his napkin before standing up with his tray. "Carly Shay, three o'clock."

With that, Gibby went to the trashcans to dispose of his lunch, leaving me alone to face Carly. Bravely, I turned my head just a little to be able to see her come through the double doors that lead in and out of the cafeteria. She looked good, which managed to make feel a little upset. After last night, she looked like her usual supermodel self, complete with a perfectly constructed outfit with her little heeled boots, not a single pin-straight, long black hair out of place, her dark eyes didn't look tired or sore from extensive crying, and she held her lunch bag without some sort of guarded python grip. She walked arm in arm across the room with her best friend, Sam, scanning the room for two free seats.

As if God had a score to settle with me, Carly made eye contact with me, hesitant at first, but hopeful. Stupid me said last night that we were still cool, no hard feelings, so she took that as an open invitation to march right up to my table the next day. While Carly cautiously approached the table and slowly put her lunch down before sitting, as if she were dealing with a mountain lion or a bear, Sam casually flopped into her chair, getting comfortable.

Since Carly was still trying to figure out if I was plague-infected, I decided to try and be civil with Sam. "Hey Sam."

She narrowed her eyes at me, hostile but not unusual, then pointed a finger at my unopened bag of Sun Chips. "You gonna eat those, Benson?"

Sighing, I wasn't in the mood for her crap. And on top of that, I was actually pretty hungry. "Well, I was—"

"Thanks, little man," She said with her triumphant Sam laugh, rubbing her hands together and taking the chips anyway. "Ya know, one of these days, you're gonna have to have the balls to stick up for yourself," Her mouth was full, spewing forth crumbs of _my _chips. "No wonder Carly rejected you last night. You're a little _bitch._"

"_Sam!_" Carly hissed, swatting at her friend's arm, mortified beyond belief. I wasn't sure what hurt me more—the fact that Sam just openly and publicly trashed me on a very personal and private matter that didn't even directly involve her, or the fact that probably after I left Carly's place, she dialed her phone and spilled what just happened to her best friend, the same best friend who also seemed to be my mortal enemy.

"Nah, it's okay," I stood up, pushing the remains of my lunch to Sam, who was already disinterested with her surroundings, twirling with a lock of blonde hair that fell right below her rib cage. "I gotta go talk to Mr. Parker about my test grade."

Without waiting for a goodbye, I shouldered my backpack and walked past the entire David-Lindsay scene which was still ongoing, deciding to just spend the last twenty minutes of my lunch period in the library. No matter how I shook it, though, no matter how much I tried to distract myself with Oscar Wilde or Holden Caulfield, Sam's vicious nature came to mind, ice-cold blue eyes and all.

After nearly ten years of having to deal with the girl, I slowly but surely learned to just blow Sam off, simply act like anything she said meant nothing to me. In middle school, her quips about my weakness, about my puppy love for Carly, about my overachieving nerdiness, all her little comments stung. But eventually, they lost meaning. If someone told you how wonderful and terrific you were all day, every day, it eventually would start to mean less and less. The same thing applied to Sam's nasty comments.

It wasn't like I was equally vicious to her. In fact, all I had ever done since that day in second grade when we met was be nice and patient with her. I had come to just accept that some people were just _born _savage the way she was. Maybe she was raised by wolves. Maybe I was still thinking about her when I should've been over it by now.

* * *

"Good afternoon, Freddie," My mother greeted when I opened the door to our loft, hard at work in the kitchen, even though she was supposed to be leaving for work in twenty minutes. "How was your day?"

Oh, you know. Childhood friend told you that you were destined to be just-friends, had to force yourself to face her the next day, all while her bitch of a best friend chewed up your heart and spit it out, along with your Sun Chips. "It was fine, I got good marks on my history test."

"Good for you." My mother gave me the closest thing she could to a smile, looking down at the mixing bowl in her shaky hands. That attempt at motherly pride was all she could muster since my father's death.

My father died when I was eight.

"There's a surprise on your bed," She finally said. "Go and get washed up, supper will be ready in ten minutes."

Nodding, I followed down the hallway to my bedroom, opening the door and seeing a little envelope on my bed. Great. Taking one look at it, I recognized the sender's address. Running my thumb underneath the seal, I pulled out the letter, quick to get this over with.

Fredward Benson has been accepted into Stanford University for the fall school year, blah blah blah, congratulations for getting accepted into one of the nation's top schools, yadda yadda yadda, call this pre-recorded hotline if you have any questions or comments, whatever.

"Freddie!" I heard my mother call for me and I tossed the letter away, putting a smile on my face. "You have a visitor?"

Wondering who, I went out to find Gibby in my dining room, my mother already serving him some dinner. Raising an eyebrow, I smirked at him. "What're you doing here?"

"What," He said in between bites. "Not excited to see me?"

I frowned. "Thrilled."

Gibby started explaining to me how he needed help with a math assignment, which was odd since I was in calculus and he was in statistics. Once my mother grabbed her things for work and kissed me goodbye, Gibby straightened his back. "There's a party tonight."

He was a true master of persuasion. "That's cool. I'm not going."

"Come on," He snorted. "I can bring a date."

"Well, when you put it _that _way."

I made myself a plate of my mother's spaghetti and retreated to my room to bullshit away my Friday evening. Gibby followed me. "It's one of Lenny Oliver's parties."

"Because I _so _want some girl to come up to me at lunch next week and accuse me of sleeping with her."

"You're such a little bitch," He rolled his eyes and I remembered that was exactly what Sam said to me about the whole Carly situation.

Clearing my throat, I shrugged. "Fine. Lemme finish eating."

Gibby smiled, slapping me on the shoulder. "You, my sir, are a saint." He looked down at my Stanford letter lying on the floor, picking it up and skimming through the lines. "You got into _Stanford?_"

"Yep."

"Congratulations, man!"

I grimaced. "Whoop-dee-do."

"Wait," He looked surprised. "You're not excited about getting into one of the top schools in the country?"

"Couldn't you tell? I'm thrilled."

"The hell's your deal, Benson?" If I didn't know any better, he looked genuinely concerned. "Even if Stanford wasn't your first choice, you'd be some sort of grateful."

"Sorry," I muttered, poking at my dinner, suddenly at a loss of an appetite. "Just, I didn't have California in mind."

"Well, what _did _you have in mind?"

"NYU. The big city, journalism, something like that."

Gibby, who always bragged about growing up in Buffalo, would understand. "Fuck New York. It's expensive, crowded, and all the chicks are hot, but they have sticks up their butts." I pretended that Gibby's arguments were valid. "But California?" He let out a low whistle. "They're tan and easy, willing to sleep with anyone to get a movie gig."

I took a bite of spaghetti. "Stanford isn't in Hollywood, Romeo. It's nearly six hours away."

Gibby thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, whatever. But I dunno, man. I'll never understand your _genius _brain."

Finishing my dinner, I handed Gibby my plate and forced him out of my room so I could put a clean shirt on for this stupid party. Why I even agreed to go in the first place was beyond me. But Carly would probably be there, and hopefully I could convince her that I was more than, I dunno, her friendzoned neighbor?

* * *

Now I knew why high school parties were so overrated. All Lenny Oliver's party consisted of was a congregation of drunken minors dry-humping to too-loud music, _or_ if you went out back,smoking weed in the backyard pool. I decided a seat on one of the patio sofas alone would be my home for the next three hours, or at least until I could find Carly.

"What's your name?" I looked up to see a tan-skinned girl with thick dark hair smile at me. She was wearing a leather dress, smelled awfully strong of hard liquor, and I recognized her as one of the varsity football player's girlfriends.

"Uh," I debated for a second, looking at her horny and desperate eyes. Probably just got in a fight with the boyfriend, using me to lash out at him while still trying to maintain her worthiness of men. "My name is Freddie."

"Have I ever told you—" She hiccupped, sitting beside me and slumping into my lap. "—How cute I think you are! Seriously, I think we should _fuck!_"

As if on cue, a testosterone-charged, overly tipsy guy stormed up to me and her. "Little shit, what do you think you're doing with my girlfriend!"

"Oh, _now _you want to think of me as your—" The girl held her hand to her mouth, gagging a little. Swallowing it down, she stood up to face the guy, not realizing her skirt was up, and yep, she wasn't wearing underwear. "Todd, go to _hell!_"

They continued going back and forth on who was the latest person to cheat on the other, and I couldn't help but beam at such a display of tender young love. Nobody else seemed to pay attention to their screaming match, and since I didn't want to see how it would end, I slipped past them, going to the bar and grilling deck beside pool for some water. I checked my phone for the time. Only two hours and forty-five minutes before Gibby promised we could leave.

Poking my head around all the cabinets for a glass, I couldn't find anything besides used condoms and shot glasses with lipstick stains.

"Freddie?" Turning my head around at that familiar voice, I saw Sam. "The hell are you doing here?"

I saw Sam, then I _saw _Sam.

What does one do when they see their arch nemesis half naked? She was wet, blonde hair looking dark brown and skin beading water drops, her pink bikini top looking a size too small in the most perverted way, and her denim shorts were unbuttoned and unzipped, riding low on her hips. Her belly button was pierced, she had a tattoo barely peeking out on her hipbone, and mother of god, I honestly had no idea what to do with myself.

The most vicious and heartless person I knew also had a body to bring any man, no matter how righteous, to his knees. By some miracle, I was still standing. "Gibby came, dragged me along."

Not to my surprise, finding out she was _hot _didn't mean she was secretly delicate too. "Hm, if this is your attempt at proving to Carly you're some hot shit party animal, then that's pathetic."

In a really messed-up way, she could read my mind better than anyone else. "Shut _up, _will you? And honestly, put some clothes on before somebody mistakes you for being a whore." I narrowed my eyes at her. "Oh. Too late."

Although I found a foolproof method of simply not giving into Sam's games, there was the occasional time I slipped up. But if anyone had to deal with her for as long as I have, it sort of would become an automatic response that you couldn't help.

Not looking hurt, big surprise there, Sam shrugged, sort of smiling. "At least I'm not a virginal bitch."

Ouch. Unmoved, I scoffed. "At least I have a future."

"Lemme guess," She rolled her eyes, coming into the bar, taking a shot glass and filling it up with the vodka on the countertop. "Your future is a dead-end job that you're not happy with, but it makes a lot of money and keeps your third wife from leaving you, which she ends up doing anyway, running off with half your fortune with either the pool boy or her personal trainer." She looked up at me, taking the shot she poured without hesitance. "And her personal trainer is a woman."

That was a good insult, I would give her that. "Somebody has an awful lot of time to think about my future."

"Look, as much fun as this is," She refilled her shot glass, then taking a few drinks straight from the bottle. "I'm not gonna spend my prime years in a pissing contest with you. I got better shit to do." She started to turn away with both the shot glass and the full bottle under her arm, then stopped, jaw sort of dropping.

Following her line of vision, I saw what she saw. I almost puked. There was Carly, straddling the lap of a guy I had never seen in my life, openly swapping spit with him for the whole world to see. My fists clenched, my face flushed. I could feel a lump in my throat that was so big, I felt like I would choke if I tried to swallow. In all my life, I never felt so _angry._ Not even twenty-four hours prior, she told me she had no interest in guys at the moment, it wasn't me, it was her, she wasn't ready, she loved me too much and wanted me to stay her best friend.

Ironic, how her love for me was exactly what was getting in the way of her loving me.

"Freddie," Sam looked at me, eyes narrowed like they always were, but voice scarily gentle. Not only was I crushed and angry, but _humiliated_. Sam of all fucking people had to be the one with me when I witnessed Carly engaging in public foreplay with a guy I could guarantee didn't care about her as much as I did. "Hey—" She tried to step closer to me, but I put my hand up, stopping her.

"Get the hell away from me." I didn't need her shit, I didn't need her insults to top off how awful I already felt. "Go be a bitch and torture some other pathetic soul somewhere else because I feel fantastic enough already."

She was silent for a longer beat than usual, took a shot from the vodka bottle, then let out a short breath. "Guess what. Carly told me she's giving it up to him tonight."

Her need to constantly bring me down was, quite frankly, disgusting. Going back to my not showing her any reaction strategy, I scoffed, pretended I was the happiest motherfucker she knew, and pushed away from her to go home.

* * *

When I attempted to go home after all that crap that happened between me and Sam, Gibby, of course, was wasted and not in any rush to leave. He was sitting between two girls, tonguing one for a while before swapping sides to the other. Stopping for less than five seconds, he smugly frowned at me. "Sorry bro. Too busy to leave."

"Right, okay," I licked my lips, stuffing my fists in my pockets and turning away, debating to leave Gibby and his drunk womanizer ass without a ride home. Then I figured that since the two chicks he was with were ugly, I'd snap a few pictures of the three of them, and then just hold it against him for the rest of his young life.

Frustrated with being stranded at this party, I thought about how I never got that glass of water outside, so I pushed my way through the crowd and into the kitchen. There were mass amounts of people fornicating throughout the house, so I figured I wasn't overstepping any boundaries by helping myself into a cabinet for a clean glass.

"Freddie!" My name was called, and I knew that voice. Sighing, wishing I was dead, I spun around and faced Carly with a smile.

"Hi."

"I, uh, I didn't expect you to be here!" She held her arms across her chest, as if she was caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

I didn't see her prince charming around anywhere, and her clothes were still fully intact. "Gibby."

"Oh, right, I'm just here with, um, Sam."

Annoyed with her attempt to cover her ass, I nodded, smirking bitterly. "Right. I ran into her a while ago. She told me you were, uh, planning on fucking that guy you were with."

If it was anyone else in this situation beside me and Carly, I would've laughed at how fast her face turned pale. "What? What guy?"

"That guy you were frenching out by the pool," I was surprised with the way I managed to keep myself collected in an oddly complacent way.

She sighed shakily, and I was a little baffled at _her _tearing up."Oh. Luke."

"But, ya know, it's cool," I started backing away, ready to just ditch Gibby and get bitched at later for it. "You love me and you can't love me for loving me. But you can love him for not loving you. And so much for not wanting a guy at the moment. But it's okay. Really."

"Freddie—" She was visibly crying, lip quivering, but her attempts to win back my friendship and explain herself was interrupted by a loud collective yell.

The two of us looked through the archway that lead into the entertainment room where the majority of the party was at, seeing a small blonde standing above the crowd on the pool table, the center of all attention and the cause of all the yelling. She was dancing to the music like a stripper, clearly wasted. Her hands reached up and fumbled with the back of her bikini string, making all the guys in the crowd go wild. I didn't care too much about some dumb bimbo at a party about to humiliate herself, so I turned back to Carly to finish our lovely conversation.

Carly, however, narrowed her eyes at the blonde on the pool table, examining whoever she was. "Hey, she's wearing my shorts—_Ohmygod!_" She gripped my arm, a completely horrified look on her face. "That's _Sam!_"

I looked at the girl at the table again, just as shocked. "What!"

"She's about to ruin her life!" Without a second word, mostly-sober Carly went to go retrieve the shitfaced Sam. I followed closely, shoving through the crowd. Eventually, Carly and I reached the pool table, where Sam was still bobbing to the music, fighting with the bikini that was thankfully double-knotted.

"Take your top off! Show us them titties!" A guy right beside me screeched, the entire audience backing him up, then taking a long swig of his red Solo cup.

I looked at the guy, a bald, tattooed man who looked to be too old to be partying with high schoolers, and gave him a hard glare. "Are you fucking kidding me! Go try to feel up some other bitch somewhere else!"

"Bro, lighten up!" He laughed angrily, taking another drink. "It's a _party!_"

"C'mon Sam!" Carly was attempting to pull her best friend off the table, but, of course, Sam was refusing, pushing Carly off her while cussing her out every other second. "Sam, you're drunk and you're going to regret this later! Get down and let's get something to eat!"

"F-F_uuuuck_ off, Carls!" She swatted at Carly's hand, stumbling over herself. "Go fuck your b_oooyyy _friend! Leave me alo_oo_ne!"

"Freddie!" Carly looked at me with desperate eyes, practically tearing up all over again. "I know you don't like her, but she's my best friend! _Please _help!"

Not only was Sam my least favorite person, but the girl I possessed all the anger for was the one pleading for me to save her. Rolling my eyes, swearing at myself for being a half-decent person, I climbed up onto the table, putting my arms on Sam's shoulders. "Sam," I spoke lowly so that the crowd wouldn't hear me. "We have to go. Come on."

"Benson?" She smelled so harsh of vodka and I barely saw her ten minutes earlier where she looked sober and coherent. "You're _still _here? _Jeeee_-zus. When will you get that _C-Carr_ly no want Fred-_weird!_"

Trying to tell myself she was drunk and to not take her shit so personally, I pulled at her wrist. "Sam. Let's _go_."

She looked at me straight in the eye, and for a second, she looked completely sober. "No."

Angry and frustrated, I lifted her up bridal style and hopped off the table, causing the entire crowd to boo at me and cuss me out for being a party ruiner. Ignoring them and resisting Sam's attempts to be released, I carried her back into the kitchen. "You'll thank me later."


	2. Chapter 2

_Line-break abuse this chapter. Because I'm shitty at writing segways._

* * *

"There's another party tonight," Gibby sang in his voice that also threatened to suffocate me if I refused his invitation.

Recalling the events of the last and only party Gibby dragged me to, I frowned. "Totally."

"Seriously dude, what's your problem?" I flicked an eraser shaving at him. "At Lenny's party, you didn't do anything beside rescue that hot blonde from becoming a legend."

My mouth lifted at one corner. "You do realize that hot blonde was _Sam_, right?"

If only I had a camera. His jaw dropped in a way that was mixed between objection and arousal. "_Puckett? _She has a body like _that?_" Not interested in feeding into his woman-drooling, or in this case, demon-drooling, I shrugged, flipping over my chemistry work page. "You can barely tell with all those frumpy t-shirts and sweater she wears."

I couldn't help but look over my shoulder to Gibby's center of vision, Sam sitting at her own lab table across the room, filling a test tube with butane and lighting up the escaping fumes with a lighter that was clearly school contraband. Gibby was right, though, I never would've guessed a girl in an old band t-shirt and tattered jeans would be the same girl that would fill out a bikini perfectly. She was evil, but I had to give her credit where credit was due.

"You've been barking up the wrong tree, man," Gibby gave me his all-knowing tsk.

Realizing what he was implying, I scowled at him. "Are you in_sane_? She's cruel. Besides, I've known her too long."

"You've known Carly just as long."

"It's not the same," I deadpanned, annoyed at him for even suggesting that I should've gone for the psychotic blonde over her more clean-cut, ladylike best friend.

"Whatever you say bro," He grabbed my chemistry sheet to copy off of. "So, party tonight? I heard Carly is gonna be there."

I neglected to tell Gibby what I saw Carly doing at the party, knowing he'd make a huge deal out of it and give me faulty advice by telling me to spitefully hook up with one of her friends. "I'll pass."

"Whoa, is Freddie Benson passing up on an opportunity to get into Carly Shay's drunk skirt?"

"Asshole," I muttered, ending the conversation.

Anxiously watching the clock, I only had twenty minutes to go before I'd be school-free for a liberating weekend. I finished my worksheet and went to turn it in, but when I got back to my lab table, Gibby was back to selling me the idea of attending the party.

Coming up with some form of a lie, I snapped a finger. "Sorry, just remembered that I have something to do with my mom."

"Since when did you look forward to hanging out with that nut job?"

He had a point. "Don't be a douche. She's my _mom_."

"Fine," He let me live with my lie, holding his hands up in truce. "I'll drag you along to the next party then."

Relieved, I bagged up my notebooks, thankful the day was reduced to two minutes left. "Can't wait."

* * *

I really wished I _had _let Gibby drag me to that party. My mother was sitting on the couch, a tissue pressed to her eyes. "Oh, goodness," She allowed herself a moment to wipe her tears. "This was your father's favorite movie."

Looking at the black-and-white movie playing on the television, I tried to nod in understanding. "It's a good movie."

No, it was not a good movie. It was only the six-hundredth time I was watching Charlie Chaplin wobble across the screen, up to some new antics, and I couldn't possibly understand how or why my mother enjoyed torturing herself by watching it every weekend. I patted her knee, thinking of some way to talk her into giving me the flat screen so I could watch Friday night football.

My mother, as if reading my mind, cleared her throat. "How about you go pick us up some ice cream?" She looked at me with one of those hopeless smiles. "To celebrate your acceptance into Stanford."

Getting up, grateful she was giving me some excuse to leave her perpetual state of mourning, I heard her last snippet, sniffling about how proud my father would be of me attending his alma mater. I pretended I didn't hear her.

I grabbed my keys and headed down to the parking garage, glad to be getting at least half an hour of sorrow-free peace. Not that I didn't love my mom, she was my only family after all, but the daddy death talks after ten years was getting to be a little much.

Driving across town to the only Whole Foods in Seattle, the only acceptable place to buy consumer goods according to my mother, I was also given a list of groceries for me to pick up while I went to fetch her frozen cow lactation. Wandering inside the familiar brick establishment, I wandered the aisles of the rustic market, trying to look like at least a little bit manly, despite the fact I was in a Whole Foods.

Picking up everything from her tofu to cubed pineapple, I eventually made my way to the ice cream section. I looked at my options, flavors ranging from raw banana to coconut milk. Scouring for a not-fruit ice cream, I was relieved to see plain chocolate. When I picked it up and saw it was _dark _chocolate, unprocessed, sugar-free, and supported more charities that I could name, I hung my head in defeat. So much for ice cream. Picking up the chocolate one to make my mom happy, I wrapped up my little trip.

I pulled out of the Whole Foods lot, turning onto the road that led right down the most busy street in the city. In the corner of my eye, I saw a Baskin Robbins, something my mother heavily frowned upon, and I figured that what she didn't know wouldn't kill her. The Baskin Robbins was in between a sketchy liquor store and a leased nail salon, and I went in and out for a hot fudge sundae uneventfully.

But when I got in my car and started backing out, I saw a small blonde in my review mirrors, almost getting run over. She held up her arms, letting out an unnecessary scream, and I slammed on my breaks, unbuckling and rushing out of the car to her side.

It was _Sam _of all people, wearing a skintight black silk dress with scandalous amounts of cleavage and thigh, with a beat-up black leather jacket over it. She was barefoot, intimidatingly tall heels in her hand, stumbling over herself. "Sam?" I grabbed her arm, wondering where the hell she came from. By the look and smell of her half-drunken bottle of Jack Daniels, she was tipsy. "Sam, it's barely five-thirty, are you _drunk?_"

She looked at me, recognizing me, then threw my arms off of her. "F-Freddie? Why the fuck are you following me?"

She wasn't slurring, a sign she wasn't totally bombed yet, and that I could have a half-intelligible conversation with her. "I wasn't following you, Sam. You're drunk."

"I'm not drunk, but this oughta do it," She took a long swig from the Jack bottle, as if it was just water. She pressed her mouth to her wrist. "Carly's not with me, so no need to stalk my life or come to my _rescue._"

Surprised she somehow remembered the little stunt she pulled at the party, I knit my brows. "This has nothing to do with Carly. Tell me how—"

"Has n_ooo_thing to do with Carly, my ass!" Sam was yelling, thanks to the alcohol swarming her body, pedestrians all around us staring. I closed my eyes, finding it in myself to be patient with her.

"It doesn't, so shut up and come on. Did you drive?"

She shook her head. "None of your damn motherf_uuu_cking business!"

"Sam," I stepped closer, taking the bottle she was sucking on. "I'm taking you home."

"I don't _want _to go home!" The seventeen-year-old, intoxicated blonde standing before me was also pouting like a little toddler. I groaned in my throat.

"Then where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere with_outtt_ you!"

A small crowd was circled around us, watching this interaction, my face burning from embarrassment. Once I saw a police car in the distance, I began to panick. Stepping closer to her, I pointed a finger to my car. "Get into the car, Puckett."

"Kidnapping are we?" I changed my pointed finger from my car to the police on the main road, getting closer to crossing by the little scene she was making. Luckily she had enough common sense to not want to get arrested. "Fine, _finee._"

Escorting her into the passenger seat, I was cursing at myself, wondering what the _hell _I was getting myself into. When I got into my side of the car, turning on the engine, Sam was already at work on _my _ice cream sundae. "What kind of bitch gets a cherry on top of his sundae? Is it for symbolic reasons?"

Rolling my eyes at her attack on my virgin status and simply letting her have my sundae, I backed out of the lot, glad I wasn't about to run into any other shitfaced blondes. "You gonna explain yourself?"

"To you?" She licked the whip cream off her finger. "Hell no."

I expected as much. "Does Carly know where you are?"

I saw Sam fidget, but she tried to casually eat the ice cream. "Unlike _some _people," She narrowed her eyes at me. "I don't have Carly on the mind all the time."

Just ignore her little comments. "Where am I taking you? Home?"

"What kinda loser spends their Friday nights at home?" She slapped a hand to her cheek in a Macaulay Culkin fashion. "Oh, no offense."

"Drunk before bars are even open," I sighed in an exaggerated, disappointed way. "That's a story to tell the grandkids."

She snorted. "Babe, you have no _idea _what kind of stories I have to tell."

Not wanting to know whatever she meant by that, I drove the short route onto the highway in silence. After five minutes of having no idea where I was delivering the mess beside me, I cleared my throat. "I kinda need to know where I'm taking you."

"And I _kinda_ don't want to tell you."

I thought I was being nice by playing taxi cab, but I wasn't about to play detective too. "Either you tell me, or I'm dropping you off at Carly's."

She hissed. "Like fuck you're not."

I half-smirked. "Carly lives in the apartment across from me, it's not like it's out of my way."

"Fine, you ass," She tried to fix her hair, which was, and always had been, a long, curly mess. "Keep heading straight and get off onto Benjamin Street."

Following her directions, amazed how someone who downed half a bottle of whiskey could also navigate her way through the largest city in Washington, I pulled off the highway and was lead to the heart of downtown Seattle.

She pointed to a building off to the right, ritzy being my first word to describe it, and I pulled up the curb to the front. There were large stone steps that lead up to the many pairs of white French doors, fairy-tale gardens surrounding the front, giant pillars to give the building a look of grandeur, and I was in awe. A woman was pacing the front of the building, wearing a deep purple dress, a cell phone pressed to her ear.

Sam, not acting as if any of this scenery was new, gathered her things and looked at me with a forced look. "Uh, thanks a heap or whatever."

I grabbed her arm before she could fully get out of the car. "Wait, Sam," She looked back at me with a look of impatience. The woman out front noticed the two of us, picking up her long dress and scurrying to us at full speed. I could've sworn I saw Sam gulp. "What is this place?"

She scoffed, trying to avoid the gaze of the woman still making a beeline for her. "Superheroes don't give away their secrets."

* * *

Carly stood before me with red velvet cupcakes in hand, a peace offering. Her sad eyes and buoyant smile made me widen my front door enough to let her slip through. She put her tray on the dining table, shuffling in place, while I stood in my kitchen archway, watching her cautiously.

I wasn't an idiot. Apology was written all over her face. Being the nice guy I was cursed being, I let out a breath. "Look, Carly, thanks for—"

"Shh!" Carly interrupted me, throwing her hands up. "S-Sorry, I-I just worked myself up to say this, and I bake when I get nervous, and I don't want to screw this up—" She stopped abruptly, punching her fist lightly into her other hand, defeated. "I-I'm sorry about how you found out about Luke at that party. He's a friend, nothing else."

I was gonna call her out on hypocrisy, how she used _friend _to describe me the same way, but Carly sadly half-smirked, clarifying. "A friend I like kissing, a friend I wasn't _raised _with. Freddie, you're amazing and I love you, and I wanted to make sure you didn't hate me after that party," Her doe-like eyes began to water. "Because even though I deserve to hurt right now, I don't want to lose my best friend."

Advisedly, I switched my view from her crying face to my socks. She hurt me. She hurt me by leading me on for the past few years, hurt me by finally rejecting me and trying to pretend nothing ever happened, and hurt me by lying to me so she could have a guilt-free hook-up with some guy. I should've pointed her to the door, declared our friendship on hiatus, and eat her delicious cupcakes without her.

But I felt nothing. No anger, no hard feelings, nothing. It was a surreal, oddly liberating, and downright unsettling feeling to possess. I tried to distract myself from it.

Giving her a hug, because that was what people were supposed to do in situations like this, I let out words of assurance to reinstate the friendship we had before this mess.

Carly, who was back to her happy, let's-spread-sunshine self, wiped her face of all evidence of crying, poking me in the stomach. "How about we go out? There's this little party tonight, and it'll be fun. Just us friends."

The way she was jumping right back into being normal didn't bother me as much as I expected it to. Also knowing it was probably the same party Gibby attempted to drag me to, I hung my head, nodding. "Okay. I'll meet you in the garage in twenty minutes."

"Freddie," She whined, showing her way out of my loft. "I'm gonna need more like _forty _minutes."

I let her have her forty minutes, taking five of my own to out on a fresh shirt and fix my hair, and the other thirty-five mindlessly surfing TV channels. Locking up my loft and taking the elevator to the ground floor, I sat on the hood of my car, waiting for Carly.

After an extra ten minutes of waiting, Carly's heeled boots clicked against the concrete garage floor. By the way she dressed, I could tell that what she had planned was more than what she initially described as a _little party_. With her sparkly black mini dress and destroyed leather jacket, she reminded me of how Sam looked when I last saw her.

My parking space was beside Carly's, and I stayed put, twirling my keys. "Who's car?"

"Yours. Spencer isn't giving me gas money until next Tuesday."

Spencer was her older brother and guardian, since her dad was in the air force and off saving third-world countries somewhere, and her mom was a victim of cancer. The death of a parent was something we both bonded over when we first met, and if I predicted accurately, it was also something that put me on the friends-only track.

Not bothered by that last thought as much as I expected, we climbed into my car. As I started pulling out of the garage and onto the road, Carly was bent over, picking up something off my car mat. "What's with this?"

Glancing over, I saw a half-consumed bottle of Jack Daniels. Somehow, I felt like I was caught in some horrible wrongdoing. "It's, uh—"

She laughed to herself, dropping the bottle back to the floor. "Hitting the sauce at seventeen? _And _leaving the evidence in your car? If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were acting like—"

"Sam?" I couldn't help myself from interjecting.

I could feel her raise a brow. "How'd you know?"

Reassuring myself that I did nothing wrong, I sighed. "Ran into Sam a few hours and she was totally bombed. I gave her a ride."

Carly, if I wasn't mistaking, took a minute to silently fume. "She was _drunk_?"

I didn't see why Carly was so surprised by that. Ever since we were fifteen, it seemed like every time I saw Sam, she was either some degree of intoxicated or hungover. "Isn't she always?"

"Y-Yeah, whatever," Carly was brushing it off, swallowing down however much anger she was feeling. "I thought you hated her."

"Well yeah," I shrugged. "But I wasn't gonna leave her stranded and drunk in the middle of the city."

"Where did you drop her off?"

I felt like I was in the hot seat of a police interrogation room. "Some place downtown. It looked really swanky."

She dropped her head against the passenger seat, mumbling under her breath. "Sam… you're a moron…"

"Why? What was that place? Sam didn't say."

"It's nothing, just forget about it."

"Carly, come on. You know you can trust me."

She got mildly defensive. "Sorry but it's not my place to say."

* * *

This new party was much different from Lenny Oliver's. For one, it didn't look like some cliché house party found on an MTV show. Carly made me park a block away from the venue, a small, square brick building in the industrial side of town.

Inside, a local band was wailing a Nirvana tribute on the makeshift stage, since this was Washington and every up-and-coming grunge band in Seattle felt like they had to pay homage. Little did most of these greasy-haired wannabe angst bands know was that Nirvana was formed in Aberdeen, two hours from Seattle. They also didn't know that listening to _Smells Like Teen Spirit _over and over was getting redundant and that Cobain was probably rolling in his grave, even though he was cremated, knowing these bands weren't doing anything to be original.

This didn't stop the overly-angry college drop-outs on stage from slurring the lyrics, trying too hard to mimic the way Cobain had done it. I sat in a ragged booth in the back, across from Carly, sipping on my soda, watching the mess on stage with disgust.

Carly, who didn't know the difference between the Beach Boys and Beastie Boys, nodded her head to the beat, smiling. "They're pretty good, aren't they?"

Nirvana was one of my favorite bands and Anal Fisting, or whatever "provocative" name they stylized themselves as, was thoroughly butchering it. Instead of voicing this, I simply shrugged.

"They're _shhhiiit_!" A new voice came up to our table, her voice drunken and hitched enough to be unrecognizable. The only light sources in the entire building were coming from a lamp onstage and at the bar, so it was too dimly lit and crowded to see who was at our table. "Come, _onnn_. You thi_iink _Kurt w_ooouuu_ld appreciate_eeee _some _dummm_b fucks onstage _preeeetending_ that th_ee_y are the true v-vessels_sss_ to carry on the alle_goooor_ical _meaninnng_ of his lyri_iiics_?"

This drunk girl, whose voice was starting to sound a little familiar, basically had all my thoughts about this band summed up in one sentence, eloquently. Carly, who recognized the voice too, pulled out her phone, using the screen lights to shine onto the girl's face.

Low and behold, Sam was before us, Heineken in hand, eyes squinting from Carly's sun-equivalent phone. "Jeez, C_ar_ls, are you trying to bli_iin_d me?"

"Sam," Carly's eyes were filled with agitation, but her voice was soft with disappointment. "You're supposed to be at rehearsal."

"I went," She retorted bitterly, taking a long swig, completely unaware of my presence. "Stayed for ten _minnn_utes, hopped in a _caaaa_b, and came here to _liii_ve my life."

I watched Carly try to pull the bottle from Sam's face, but she clawed at Carly's wrist, yanking away forcefully and stumbling back into the crowd, flashing the finger. Carly sipped her fruity foo-foo drink, pressing her eyes into her palm. "That girl."

Had I known Sam a miniscule bit more than I did, I would've offered some sort of words of console. But I didn't, so I was stuck patting Carly's wrist, pulling some general crappy advice from my ass. "You love her."

"When we were sixteen, it was cute," Carly said more to herself than to me, taking both hands and cupping her own face. "She promised me she'd lighten up."

Feeling uncomfortable, I realized that was probably why Sam was so defensive about me dropping her off at Carly's earlier. "Maybe she's trying."

"This is too much…" Carly shook her head, face still in hands, sounding angry with both Sam and herself.

"Rehab—" I started to suggest like any other person would, but Carly violently cut me off, nails flying into my wrist.

"Are you _kidding?_" Carly was spitting out chunks of flames at me. "Have you met Sam? She'll never speak to me again!"

Clearly, I didn't know the entirety of the situation. Sam had a drinking vice, just like any other hormonally rabid teenager with too much freedom would. Carly's reaction was motherly and understandable, but the worst I'd ever seen Sam was table-dancing at that party, which would've humiliated her, but not killed her. If I was allowed to deposit my two cents, I'd say Carly was just prone to overreacting.

Letting Carly self-loathe over the mistakes of her blonde friend, I pretended to tolerate the band that was still on stage, watching the mix of college and high school kids dandling and invading each other's personal space. It was elbow to elbow everywhere, from the bar to the booths to the bathrooms, and I wasn't looking forward to trying to make my way outside.

Thinking about that a little too soon, Carly's eyes shot to a certain collapsing figure in the crowd. Some people dropped to her side, trying to help her up, but the majority kept dancing on. "Oh my—"

Like at the previous party, Carly wasted no time getting to the side of Sam, who seemed to always put herself in the middle of trouble, whether on accident or not. Although Carly was tall and lithe, she was also as skinny as my pinky and was far from robust as an adolescent girl could get, so I climbed out of the booth with her, acting as a plow for the people.

Most people were too drunk or high or both to get pissed off at my roughness, so I got Carly to Sam without much trouble. "S-Sam!" Her voice was whimpering, fingers shaking the jaw of the fluttery-eyed, blacking out blonde. "Come on, you have to get up!"

Sam was unresponsive, limbs limp like noodles, eyes rolled in the back of her head. Carly, who was a notorious claustrophobe and anxious mess at times, began to catch up in a whirlwind of what-ifs and consternation, rapidly losing focus, forcing me to jump in and take control.

Trying to ignore the déjà vu of this incident, I slipped my arms around the backs of Sam's neck and knees, feeling the goosebumpy heat and sweaty slickness of her skin, picking up her dead weight off the floor as Carly kindly asked everyone in our path to get out of the fucking way.


	3. Chapter 3

_English teachers __**hate**__ me._

* * *

"You rang?" I groaned into my phone, finally answering Carly's call after her fifth attempt in a row to get ahold of me. Sitting onto my elbows, rubbing the sleepiness from my eye with my free hand, thinking she'd better have been mugged or some other good reason to be waking me up at seven-thirty in the morning.

"Asking you this is worth you being mad at me," She stated right of the bat, sounding rushed on her end of the line. "So, are you ready?"

"No. Goodnight—"

"Wait, Freddie!" She spoke up right before my thumb was applying pressure to the end-call button. "I need you to watch Sam for me."

"Carly, think about what you just asked me."

"Oh shut up!" She cried, irritation flooding her voice. "You two have been at each other's throats for _forever_. Get over yourselves!"

"Hey," I tried defending myself, passing the point of simply falling back asleep. Once I was woken, I was awake. "_I'm _the civil one—"

"A moron could've figured that out. Hence the reason why I'm asking you."

"She's almost a legal adult. She can watch herself."

"But she's _hungover_. She's gonna be sick and in pain and is gonna need someone. Can you just watch over her, at least until I get back?"

I climbed out of bed, pulling the previous night's pair of jeans over my boxers. "And where are you going this fine Saturday morning?"

"Dentist appointment," She answered, slams of dresser drawers and doors in her background. "This was the only time they could fit me in."

Deciding that bedhead, morning breath, and in the same t-shirt I fell asleep in was enough, I tried to conjure some ways that Carly could pay me back. "Fine. I'll be over in a second."

I traveled that short distance between my bedroom and the front door of Carly's loft, raising my knuckles to knock, but Carly was already there, swinging open the door. "I'm running late, so I'll make this quick," She pulled in all the way, motioning up the stairs that lead to her bedroom. "Sam's in my bed, Spencer's not home, and thanks so much!"

Before I could begin clamoring Carly for some form of reward for this, she was hustling out of the apartment without as much as a goodbye. I clapped my hands together, not sure of what to do. In all the ten years I'd known Carly and hung out in her house, I always had her or Spencer keeping me company, so being alone with a hungover Sam for the first time ever was a weird situation to navigate.

I flipped the TV on, hoping to get some noise to fill the emptiness of the loft, settling on the morning news. Helping myself to their kitchen, I brewed a pot of coffee. I liked Carly and Spencer's apartment. Since it was just the two of them, and since Spencer was the textbook example of an eclectic twenty-something artist, everything in their house was just so different than mine. My mom believed in plain pots and pans, floral furniture, dark woods, and anything that would remind anyone of an old lady's house. Their place, on the other hand, was filled with Spencer's unsold or work-in-progress sculptures and paintings, furniture in all sorts of slime-green and engine-red colors, and was filled to the brim with random junk the two of them accumulated through the years.

Sipping my coffee black, I sat at their couch, watching the news, slightly absorbed with the latest stories about the tension in the middle east, with the upcoming presidential campaign, and the latest update on some murder case that was ongoing in Michigan. A good twenty minutes passed before I heard a dying grunt coming from the upstairs.

The beast had awoken. Standing up and going to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom for something to feed her, I climbed the steps two at a time, stopping myself just before Carly's door, preparing to face the mess that Sam Puckett was. Pushing open the door, I slowly crept my way inside.

"Carly_yy_," Sam moaned, still sounding a little bit drunk. Her back was towards me and she was about to have the biggest disappointment of her life. "I just had the worst dream—"

She used all of her strength to flop over, audibly gasping when she saw me standing in the doorway in lieu of Carly. Playing it off, she narrowed her eyes at me. "Now my dream's come alive."

"Cute," I rolled my eyes, slowly stepping closer to her, deciding she was too fatigued to do anything to me for invading her privacy or however the hell she'd see it. "Now here, take these. It'll make you feel better."

Taking the Tylenol bottle and shaking out two capsules, I tried handing them over. Sam gave me a glare, sitting up enough to lean upright against Carly's headboard. "You're a fucking idiot."

"And here I thought I was being nice," I shot back, replacing the two pills she wasn't accepting, tossing the bottle at her. "Lie in your self-inflicted misery for all I care."

My foot was beginning to spin around, ready to carry myself back to my apartment, when Sam scoffed. "Tylenol is acetaminophen, genius."

I refocused my eyes at her. "So?"

"Tylenol is hard for the liver to metabolize," She explained flatly, kicking off Carly's blanket and slowly swinging her feet off the bed. "And I obviously already poisoned mine enough yesterday. _You_ do the math."

Sort of surprised she knew that much about pharmaceuticals, I figured it was just because she was no stranger to the morning after. "So what do you want? Aspirin?"

"First off," She pointedly shot a look at me, wobbling to her feet. "I don't need any help, _especially _from you. And second, stupid," Sam was a determined little fucker, working herself off the bed with gritted teeth. "A hangover is blood rapidly trying to rush back to the brain. Aspirin is a blood thinner, and on top of that, mixed with alcohol, causes stomach ulcers."

"Fine, Doctor Sam," I was getting frustrated with her know-it-all bullshit. Carly needed to get home, like _soon. _"Tell me the prognosis and method of treatment."

"A banana, bread, and Gatorade," Sam quickly looked at me. "But I can get it myself. I don't need anything from you."

Her constant need to defend her pride was irritating. But, deep down, I felt pity for her and her agitated state of living. She was already on the verge of total waste when I ran in to her outside that Baskin Robbins, and I could only imagine how much more alcohol she could've consumed in the five hours between I dropped her off and picked up her unconscious body off that party's floor. Sam, in a nutshell, _had _to have been feeling pretty crappy.

That didn't change the fact I was annoyed with her. "Shut up, Puckett. Carly forced me to watch over you, so I'll get it."

"And here I thought you were being nice," She muttered, mocking what I said.

Leaving her to take a shower, I went to the kitchen for Sam's request. I pulled a banana from the fruit bowl and scoured the pantry for some form of carbohydrate, eventually settling on Saltine crackers. Carly luckily had a large half-empty bottle of blue Gatorade in the fridge door, appropriately labeled _Sam _in black Sharpie.

I was about to take up everything, figuring Sam was way too sick to be up and moving around, but there Sam was, hobbling downstairs, in sweats and a tank-top, hair damp. "You took a fast shower," I observed, resulting in her giving me a bad look.

She fell onto the couch, picking up the Gatorade bottle I placed in front of her. "Good work, loser."

Curiosity got the best of me. "So, did you _really_ blackout last night?"

"I don't have a flying clue, dweeb, I don't remember anything after boozing around in some liquor store. Whatever happened last night happened and I ended up in Carly's bed, so it doesn't matter anyway." Sam was shrugging, as if that didn't freak her out. She was missing a good fourteen hours of memories, and although most of them were spent in Carly's bed, she didn't seem too worried about what happened to her. I wondered if this wasn't her first blackout.

Eventually, silence, along with its friend, tension, overtook the room, making me carefully contemplate my next move. She had her Gatorade and didn't have her liver-damaging Tylenol, plus she managed to get showered and downstairs in one piece, so I couldn't think there was much more I could do for her. Carly woke me up before eight just so I could get verbally abused and deliver a fucking banana. She _really _owed me.

"Well, if you don't need anything else—" I was about to make my departure, figuring my work was done, but I was interrupted by Sam violently emptying her stomach over Carly's floor. I winced, hurrying to put the coffee table's decorative bowl in front of her face. Her vomit looked like pure, undigested liquor, pouring into the bowl, and I tried to keep from puking myself.

Sam gagged and coughed, wiping her face and watering eyes. "Oh-Oh god…"

I rushed to her side, rubbing her back, setting aside my dislike towards her to try and help her out. She swatted me away, ignoring my attempt to be a friend, standing up and going to the kitchen with her bowl. I heard water running, then she came back with a few rags and a sponge. "You can leave now," She said finally.

"Come on Sam," I argued, fighting her constant need to come off as self-sufficient. After physically carrying her away from two potential disasters, I saw right through her ridiculous tough-girl façade. I wondered why the hell she didn't realize this. "I'm not gonna leave when you're puking all over Carly's apartment."

"And I'm not gonna ruin your pseudo-girlfriend's place, relax," She barked, not looking up from her mess. I rolled my eyes, _really _not in the mood to debate my relationship with Carly. Sam smirked at my lack of response. "Did I hit a nerve, poor little Freddie baby?"

I lost it. "Sam, what the _hell _is your problem!"

"Nothing," She didn't flinch at all at my raised voice, which made my frustration skyrocket. "I'm the drunk girl cleaning up her puke off her best friend's floor," Standing up, Sam wiped her hands on a clean towel. "Not the screaming dumbfuck yelling at her."

All will to yell at her was gone, instead replaced with a morbid desire to punch the gratified blonde in the face. "We've known each other for _years_," I lowly explained to her, letting all my impeded anger shoot at her. "And all you've ever been is this raging asshole. What did I do to you, Sam? I've tried to be you friend, but you keep being a stubborn bitch about it! What did I do to you, huh? What do I need to say sorry for?"

Her eyes avoided me, but that didn't mean she wasn't getting mad. I could see the whites of her knuckles as she balled up her fists. I didn't think to stop talking. "What the hell did I do to deserve your crap? All those punches and kicks in elementary and middle school? Stealing my food and money all the time? Tormenting me about Carly and my grades and everything I do and say? I thought it was just because you were having a rough time or because you were in a bad mood. But a bad mood doesn't last from second to twelfth grade," Running out of fuel, I hastily breathed. "You're just _mean_, aren't you?"

She was seething in silence. I waited for a response, an explanation, anything, even if it was a glint of apology in her eyes, or even a punch to the stomach. Because if she were to hit me or yell at me, then I'd at least know she _cared _enough to get upset over what I said. But she and her hungover ass stood there, facing me down, apathy embodying her from head-to-toe. Seconds ticked by, nothing being said by either one of us. She was completely unreadable, as usual, and if I forced myself to deal with her for any second longer, I would've ended up throttling her.

So when I stormed out of the apartment, not giving Sam a second thought, I slammed Carly's front door hard enough to make the entire building shake.

* * *

My brain hated me, it was official.

I spent all of English staring at the flaxen-haired hellion two rows in front of me, when I should've been paying some form of attention to the ancient woman at the front of the room going over literary terms that would be on our final exam, since it was March, and exams week was getting closer and closer by the intimidating minute. But no, my brain had predetermined that my focus would not be on getting a passing grade, but to burn holes into the back of Sam's head.

Of course Sam never came running to me when I went off on her the way I did, I figured, so I wasn't sure why I was so unsettled about what happened. I felt like I was stalking her, for less of a better word, since it was becoming a very appalling habit of mine to practically _memorize _her. It was like a sick infatuation my brain was tormenting me with, and every time I was in the same breathing parameters her, I couldn't stop myself from watching her like she was some fucking circus show.

She wasn't paying the teacher any mind, twirling a lock of hair around her finger, something I noticed she did when she was out-of-her-mind bored. I didn't know much about Sam's grades or school ethics, aside from the fact she was lazy, had no shame in copying others' work, and got in the occasional cat fight with whoever pissed her off, but her impassive haze in class clearly said she wasn't sweating over school.

During the previous period, I rapidly came to the conclusion she was pretty, or _jolie_, since it was French class. It hit me like a bus, I choked on my spit, and I was asked to leave the class to get water, s'il vous plaît. When I sat myself back in my seat, I gave myself permission to take a quick peek at Sam, who was doing her hair-twirling thing, and it was confirmed that I found her on a plane of attractive. Not just some blonde with a hot body, but a girl with big blue eyes, soft-looking hair, and a cherubic face. She went from passively decent to earth-shaking appealing in a matter of seconds. Sacré bleu.

Physically forcing my brain back into submission, I tore my sight away from Sam's head to my class notes when I realized we went from reviewing terms to _Catcher in the Rye_. Mrs. Ancient scanned the class over her glasses that were so thick, they put the old man from _UP _to shame, looking for her latest victim. "Who can explain the stints of alcoholism that Holden Caulfield went through, and why he did?"

Everyone in the class, including me, avoided her eyes, pretending to flip through notes for the answer. Sam, however, didn't budge, still absorbed with her hair twirling. Mrs. Ancient split a shit-eating smile. "Miss Puckett?"

Sam didn't so much as look up, and I could've stabbed the irony of her getting that question in the face. "He wasn't an alcoholic," She answered simply and immediately, as if it was from the word of God himself.

Mrs. Ancient was intrigued, as well as the rest of the class, since no one had the cojones to voice their honest opinions to debatably the most mentally unstable teacher at Ridgeway High. She was past the eighty-year mark, therefore, off her rocker. "He wasn't? Every time he had emotions he didn't want to deal with, he turned to alcohol."

"That doesn't make him an alcoholic."

"If you ask any psychologist—"

Sam scoffed, finally making eye contact with Mrs. Ancient. "Overeducated schmoos who are taught every possible thing about human behavior and the _brain_, and then make money-raking careers by working with people in vulnerable states of mind, capable of feeding and manipulating them into believing anything. Ask themfor reliable information, _sure_."

Our crazy teacher who was never wrong, was without argument, something awe-inspiring for the rest of us. Sam continued lazily with her answer. "Alcoholism is the _dependence _and compulsive consumptionof alcohol, and all Holden did was get _drunk._ Once, 's human nature to want to avoid your issues, especially if you're some seventeen-year-old with a dead brother, kicked out of every school you're forced to start fresh at, all while adulthood and all its corruption is staring you straight in the face. So no, I cannot answer what stints of alcoholism Holden faced because he's not an alcoholic, and it shouldn't be relevant to the story anyway."

Mrs. Ancient fixed her glasses, running a pen through something on her notepad. She completely overlooked Sam, moving onto the next question, which kind of irritated me. English teachers spend years working up some idiosyncratic literary analyses for books that have already been beaten to death, then get all pissy when some snot-nosed brat in high school actually has a valid point that shoots theirs to the ground.

Sam went back to her dispassion, which, in this situation, was a little bit endearing, and I went back to watching her every move, even though I didn't really want to. English ended before I knew it, and school ended before I knew it. Trying to figure out where the hell my day went, I fished text books out of my locker, and worked my way through the overpopulated halls to the senior parking lot.

A glistening red light burned my eyes, catching me off guard. Winter was finally wrapping up and so the sun was making its full comeback to Seattle. Squinting, I saw a cherry red Corvette pulled right up along the curb with its top down, dubstep or some other equally shitty alien music rumbling from the speakers. It was a gorgeous car, looking fresh off the car sales lot, herds of jealous students surrounding the hunk of metal, and I initially didn't think twice about it, assuming it belonged to one of the trust-fund babies.

Then the car honked. "Yo, Freddie!"

"Gibby?" I walked up to the car, afraid to touch the thing, confirming that it was, in fact, Gibby in the seat, shades over his eyes. "Who'd you rent this from?"

He grinned. "Say hello to my early birthday gift!"

"Your birthday isn't until December," This swanky-ass car was _not _his, I could've bet money on it. "Quit with the bull!"

"All I had to do was tell my mom that I was gay."

I did a double-take. "You _what?_"

"Relax," Gibby laughed at my incredulous face. "I'm not actually gay."

Before I could ask him what the hell he meant by his two adjoining statements, Gibby was already in story-telling mode. "My mom always wanted a girl and was only capable of having me and my little brother, so she figured having a gay son was the next best thing, and she wanted to reward me."

I never heard anything more ridiculous. "You lied to your mom so that she'd buy you a bunch of sumptuous crap you really don't need?"

He looked proud of himself. "Pretty genius, huh?"

That just about summed up Gibby as a human being.

Not wanting to shit all over his gay parade, but unable to help it, I crossed my arms over my chest. "What are you gonna do when you eventually have to bring a guy home?"

Gibby wagged a finger. "I'm saving myself for a clean-cut member of the LGBT community that I'll meet in or after college, and to not risk the possibility of being ostracized, I don't want to publically come out in high school."

"And when you meet your not-man soulmate?"

"Bisexual, baby," Gibby winked, then flamboyantly patting the passenger seat beside him. "Now hop in and let's go pick up some chicks."

I glanced over at my sorry excuse for a car in a distant parking space. It was grey and drab and from seven years ago, but it got good mileage and didn't cost the same as a small country. "I have my own pathetic car, thank you."

He drummed his fingers against his steering wheel. "Well, how about I pick you up later?"

At first, I was about to jump on the opportunity to ride in a Corvette and rack up some sort of shallow high school cool points, but then I remembered the conversation I had with my mom over the past week. "I can't. My mom is dragging me to some dinner. Apparently, she ran into an old college friend."

"She had a life before Daddy's death?"

Had he not been my best friend, I would've punched him for his delicacy, or lack thereof. "Shut up. Anyway, sorry, next time," I shrugged, stepping around his convertible and towards my less flashy Honda. "But hey, at least you're gay now."

Gibby didn't flinch. "Hell yeah I am."

* * *

Parents weren't supposed have lives before their children, and especially before the traumatic loss of their spouse. But, still, my mom was driving me and her CR-V through the outside hills of Seattle, where uppity rich people were notorious for setting up camp. Close enough to partake in ridiculous rich-people social activities in the city, but far away enough to avoid being associated with the commoners, or something of equal bullshit.

When my mom pulled up to the front gates of a house that would make the White House blush, I started to wonder who the hell my mom was friends with in college. Maybe she was rubbing elbows with royalty or the mafia or something.

"Fix your shirt," My mother waved her hand at me, and I rolled my eyes, running my hands to smooth down the button-up shirt my mom spent that entire afternoon ironing.

The gates opened, and we drove into the front courtyard, complete with a fountain and perfectly manicured gardens. I felt my eyes widen at the sight of the mansion that looked too Barbie-dream house to be in the middle of Seattle woodland. "Mom, who were _you_ friends with in college?"

"I always knew Pamela's family had money," She was just as in shock as I was. "But not to this extreme."

So my mom was partying it up with heiresses, who were, in my opinion, the worst kind of human there was. Sure, there was the occasional good apple who donated to charities and shit, but with people like Paris Hilton and every member of a country club ruining it for everyone else, heirs and heiresses were significantly crossed off my list of people I had no aspiration to know. I mean, for starters, my mom was in a fucking dress and I was in fancy pants and a too-tight button-down just to have dinner. Before we even went through the formalities, we were already having to impress them.

A man in some butler-looking get up was standing right in front of the front steps, walking around to my mom's side door when we parked. "Welcome, Mrs. Benson, please let me show you inside."

And so he did, up the steps, through the doors, through the marble foyer, down a few halls and we were seated at table that was the size of my bedroom, and I had a pretty big bedroom. Flowers were covered all over the center, each placement had the silverware and cups arranged they would at a wedding, and I was angry that I turned down Gibby's Corvette invitation to eat some shitty rich-people food.

"Marissa Benson," A voice came from behind us, belonging to a blonde, middle-aged woman, and she carefully wrapped her arms around my mother's shoulders, as if a full hug would infect her with poverty. "It's so fantastic that you could make it!"

The thing with rich people, they had this superiority complex. I could tell because this blonde woman was eyeing my mom in a way that wasn't in admiration, which pissed me off. My mom and I weren't money-bags wealthy, but we were pretty well off, since my father was a pediatrician and when he died, he left us with everything. And yet, my mom's college friend was looking at her the way someone would look at a starving kid in Africa.

"Pam, this is my son, Freddie," My mom grabbed my shoulders and I forced myself to plaster a polite smile and every desire to be at this dinner.

"You go to Ridgeway, right?" She asked me, and of all the countless schools in Seattle, she managed to guess the one I attended on the first try. I nodded. "My daughter goes there too. She should be down any minute now."

Great. A trust-fund baby would be joining us. The three of us stood around, even though there were chairs for us to sit at right next to us. A housekeeper came scuffling through the dining room, and our wonderful host tapped her on the shoulder. "Mrs. Diaz, could you go get—"

"I'm here, Mom, relax."

Hell froze over twice. I could feel my skin melt off my body and pool around my ankles. I considered shoving one of the knives on the table into my eye. In all what-the-holy-crap moments I witnessed in my young life, this _had _to top off all of them.

Sam flipping Puckett was before me, in a dress that wasn't slutty, with a neckline that went up to her collarbone, and a hem that ended right above the knee. Sam, the same Sam I had assumed lived in a trailer or in the wild or something, was standing in a house—_her_ house—that was exponentially better than I could've imagined. Sam's face was like a mirror of my own. Pure, utter, complete horror.

"Samantha, this is Freddie, he goes to Ridgeway, too!" Her mother was completely oblivious to the instant awkward that came over the room, nudging Sam to make nice with me.

"We know Sam," My mother jumped in, laughing at the coincidence of this whole exchange. "She's always over at Carly's place, and we live right across the hall."

Sam's mom finally got the gist, raising her eyebrows. "Oh, well. Then it looks like we're all friends here, then!"

Her misused use of the term _friend _was so funny, it could've killed a fucking cat.


	4. Chapter 4

_Carly is my favorite character, on the show and in this story._

* * *

I had no idea what I did to deserve this punishment.

"Freddie, tell me what you think. Is it a yes?"

My mom was looking at me with hopeful and expectant eyes, and this was probably the most I had ever seen her joyous about anything since my father's death. I could set aside my displeasure for this one thing, even if it was going to thoroughly kill me, because I could physically see how much it meant to my mother.

Sighing, I sold away my soul. "Yes, mom. I'll do it."

"Oh, wonderful!" My mother craned to kiss me on the cheek, after what seemed to be the first time in a long time, happily fixing the collar of my shirt. "I'll go and call Pam to let her know you're on board. You should probably head down there, though. She said she'd need you as soon as possible."

She scurried off to make that phone call and I unenthusiastically headed out of our loft, down to the garage and to my car. I fumbled to balance driving onto the road and enter the address my mom gave me into my phone's GPS. A little blue route popped up, leading me straight down to the heart of Seattle. We lived in the downtown outside the downtown district, if that made sense, so wherever I was going wasn't just right around the corner.

Apparently, my mother was getting reacquainted with Mrs. Puckett, much to my chagrin, but at the same time, it was refreshing to see something other than the look of heartbroken misery my mom usually sported. The two of them would go out on lunch dates, go see ballets and operas and all that classy stuff my mom knew better than to bring me to, and whatever else middle-aged woman friends did. But then something happened with this event Mrs. Puckett was planning, and she desperately needed a young man to replace another young man immediately, and naturally, my name came up in that conversation. I wasn't sure if Mrs. Puckett asked for me, or if my mom offered, but either way, I was driving to go save the day at some rich-people gathering.

I wasn't sure if Sam was going to be there, because although her mother was the one running and organizing whatever it was, Sam was also known to simply not show up. But I didn't have any idea how Sam acted in this richy-rich environment, so I could've been up for a total surprise.

I was, of course, surprised. The place I was told to go to was also the same place I dropped Sam off those odd weeks ago when she was bombed and wandering the streets of Seattle. It was the same castle-looking building, a banquet and gathering hall as the sign described out front, with its radiant gardens and pissing angel fountains. A valet took over my car, and I had no idea what I was delving into when I climbed those stone steps that lead up to the doors inside.

When the foyer had a crystal chandelier, a shiny grand piano, velvet curtains, marble floors, and more than enough Mona Lisa-type paintings covering each square inch of wall, I knew I was in over my head. Kids my age, trust-fund babies alike, were scattered around the foyer, all taking a collective moment of silence as they scrutinized me until I was at my wit's end. The guys were in tuxedos, the girls were in wedding dresses, and I was in a polo and Chuck Taylors. Knowing I was well underdressed for whatever polygamist ceremony this was looking out to be, I hurried to find Mrs. Puckett.

Going straight for the enormous double doors on the opposite side of the foyer, I pulled them open, surprised at how _heavy _only one of the doors were, then smacking my face against another face, who was coming out the same time I was going in. There was that dull skull-on-skull thud noise, and I wondered if I got a concussion. "Ow—" I muttered, immediately rubbing the tender spot between my eyebrows gingerly.

"Watch where you're going!" An all too familiar voice spat, and when I blinked open my eyes after the throbbing pain went away, an equally shocked pair of blue eyes were met with mine. "Freddie, what the _fuck _are you doing here?"

That was the first thing exchanged between us since that day she was hungover and I blew up on her, which said a lot about our relationship, if it could even be called one. I was going to reciprocate Sam's very question, then I realized that _I _was the fish out of water. Proceeding to just explain that her mom asked me to replace someone for something, probably to stack chairs or lift heavy objects, I stopped just short of composing a sentence, taking a holy fucking minute to look at Sam.

Like all those trust-fund bitches in the foyer, Sam was in a white wedding gown, or at least it looked like a wedding gown. While the other girls seemed to be in competition to see whose neckline was cut the lowest, or whose poufy skirt part of the dress was the biggest, Sam's dress was simple, obviously not intended to keep up in the race for best dressed. That didn't mean she looked… stunning, like a damn Disney princess or something. Her torso was in a lacy corset that accentuated how slender she was, yet how prominent her, uh, chest was, while her dress part fell into ruffles, not nearly as big and ridiculous as the other girls' skirts. Sam, being the Sam I would expect, didn't have her face all made up, and her hair wasn't nesting a tiara like everyone else, and looking at her shoes, I was relieved to know wasn't the only one in Chucks that had taken more damage than a war veteran.

She looked better than any of these other girls in her own Sam way.

Then I realized I had yet to answer Sam's question. Sam wasn't amused. "Take a fucking picture, creep, and start explaining why the hell you're here. How'd you even know what this place was?"

Huh. When she said she really didn't remember what happened that night she blacked out, I guess she meant it. Knowing if she had to ask me another question, she'd punch me, I cleared my throat. "Your mom and my mom asked me to be a replacement for someone and—"

Sam started to look a little queasy. "Hell," She paused. "No."

"Freddie, Freddie!" Mrs. Puckett rushed to the two of us, wearing clothes that were nicer than mine, but not on the same level of nice as the wedding gowns and tuxedoes all around us. "Thank _goodness _you came! You honestly have no idea how much you're saving me and this entire thing," She obliviously cupped her daughter's livid face. "And especially how much you're saving Sam's night."

"No, Mom, really, it's—"

"Hush, Samantha. After Pete tore his ACL yesterday, I never thought I'd find you a replacement escort!"

Es-_what_? My eyes went between the two of them, wondering what the hell was going on. Mrs. Puckett took pity on me, patting me on my shoulder with a smile. "The eighty-first annual Seattle debutante ball and cotillion is next month, and Sam's escort isn't able to make it, obviously, so I asked your mom if it was okay if you could replace him. Thank god you were able to. How would it look if the daughter of the organizer didn't have an escort?"

Oh shit. I was nosediving into something that I had no knowledge about, and it was far past the point of no return. She pulled me away from Sam, giving her daughter some directions over her shoulder, then escorting me into the lobby, to the left down a hallway and into a room that looked how a dressing room in a store would, except more lavish, and instead of a messy rack of discarded clothes that customers didn't want, neat tuxedoes were hanging and patiently waiting. Had Mrs. Puckett not started speaking, I would've been able to hear myself gulp.

She eyed me carefully, and for a second, she looked like Sam, except older and less angry. "Do you have a tuxedo?"

I _did _have one, when I was the best man in my cousin's wedding a few summers back, but I had no idea where it was, and I was pretty sure my mom gave it to a different cousin for a different wedding. "No, uh, sorry."

"Of course," Her voice was low, taking a step back to examine me even more. I felt under more of a microscope than when I was being watched by all those people when I first showed up. "I'll send Francis in here in a second," She looked as if she didn't know where to start with me. "He'll take your measurements and get you properly suited up."

The way she said that made me feel like Iron Man, but when she left and a scantily-sized man that made fake-gay Gibby take a run for his money took her place, I felt like how I should've. Uncomfortable and out of place.

* * *

"One-and-_a_ two-and-_a_ three-and-_a_ spin-a-_round_, da-da-_da_, da-da-_da_," An elderly woman with red lips, wore yoga pants under a fox-fur vest, and had the body build of a ten-year-old girl, was shouting above the music, clapping along and exaggerating the beat. She was the ballroom dance instructor, Helga or some other scary name, and I grew to appreciate her hypocrisy, demanding for us to be delicate and graceful, all while screaming loudly at us to do such. I was holding Sam, stepping along in a square pattern, trying not to screw up bad enough to draw the attention of the woman.

Repeating what I just said, I was _holding Sam. _What was more bizarre was that she was holding me, a little resistant at first, but after her mom forced her, Sam reluctantly obliged. Every person in a tuxedo or dress, somewhere along the number of twenty pairs, were all gathered into the ballroom, the same room Sam and I smacked faces. The room made the rest of the place look like child's play, since the room was two stories tall, with a balcony running all around the perimeters. Columns were here, statues were there, three separate chandeliers hung from the ceilings, emitting a glow that made the eggshell-white walls lambent with gold. Which was fitting, since everything from the toilets to the flooring in this place looked like it was more precious than gold.

Sam refused to look or talk to me while we spun and stepped around the center of the ballroom, her grip on my shoulder digging into me, giving me a good amount of pain, even though she was wearing elbow-length gloves. Her other hand, which was resting atop of my own gloved one, was stiff and obviously uncomfortable. Helga was making rounds, inspecting each pair, and when she stopped beside us, Sam fixed her posture, both of us pretending we knew what we were doing, and I could tell by her silence that it was pretty bad.

"I don't know what it is with you two," She examined us as we continued dancing the pattern she taught us, lips pursed. "Either you two have incredible sexual tension or just simply hate each other."

"It's the latter, I assure you," Sam said in a sweet, ethereal voice, one I eventually grew used to her using around all these people.

Helga harrumphed. "Well, you two better figure it out, or else you will be embarrassing yourselves next month."

She was gone, and Sam's slouched shoulders returned. I gave her a look. "I would've guessed it was our sexual tension."

"Gag me, Benson," Sam rolled her eyes, looking away. "No one asked you to be here."

"Your mom did."

She scoffed. "Someone who matters."

With the way Sam nodded and never talked back to her mom, I would've guessed they got along, especially since Mrs. Puckett was a nice woman. But Sam was Sam and the only person she seemed to care about, aside from herself, was Carly. "Well, relax, because I _don't_ want to be here."

There was a beat of silence, other than Helga's yelling and the string quintet playing the waltz song. I awkwardly took each step one at a time, in a robotic sort of way to make sure I got each one right. Sam cleared her throat. "You're hesitating on the second step, which throws off the rest of them."

Looking down at my feet, I watched my legs move as we repeated the same pattern, and like Sam suggested, I did have a hard time with the second step. "Uh, thanks," I was sure that was the first time I thanked her for anything, save for sarcasm. "I'll work on it."

"You don't have to."

Unsure about this non-hostile conversation between us, I tried to take a step in the right direction, so to speak. "I thought this was such an important night to you."

I could tell by the way she let out a snort was that it wasn't. "More than you know."

Dancing some tedious waltz to stuffy music in what looked to be an uncomfortable dress was not someone's idea of fun, especially Sam's. "Why don't you quit? Tell your mom you don't want to?"

"It's not that simple."

"Sure it is," I shrugged, and before I knew it, that second step in this dance was getting easier, making the both us look a little less mechanical. "Say no thanks and leave."

"Then why are you here?" She raised an eyebrow at me, finally making eye contact. "Because I'm sure you were _so _tempted to tell my mom no thanks and leave."

She had a point. Sam's mom technically had no authority over me and I still felt pressured into agreeing anyway, so it must've been harder for her, given it was her _mom _and all. "I guess you're right."

"I'm always fucking right," Before things got too buddy-buddy between us, Sam shot her eyes away from me. "Just because we're stupid partners now doesn't make us friends."

Nodding in agreement to her, I smiled a cocky smile on the inside, because I knew that this little half-second dialogue between us was the foot that was put in the proverbial door of friendship. It was only a mere coincident that we were both wearing Chucks.

* * *

"—and honestly, your mother really _can't _afford this! It's just her, you, and did you even think of your brother? I'll bet you that half his college fund went into that car!"

I listened to Carly give Gibby a lesson on morals, which I could tell by Gibby's trance, was going in one fake-gay ear and out the other. Carly stabbed her salad for emphasis, pointing her speared lettuce at Gibby, as if that would scare him into coming clean. She looked at me for back-up, even though she was nonstop chewing him out for the first half of lunch, and I stuttered for a moment, dropping my sandwich.

"Uh, yeah, bad Gibby."

He gave a look for selling him out, so he smirked. "You weren't saying that when I let you take it out for a test drive."

"Freddie!" Carly's holier-than-thou criticism shot from Gibby to me in a matter of nanoseconds. "You're _supporting _the fact he's lying to his mom and practically mocking the gay community?"

Jeez, it did sound pretty bad when Carly said it. But bros came before hoes and all that logic. "It gets over four-hundred horsepower."

"_Ugh!_" She threw her fork down. "You guys are such awful human beings sometimes!"

Gibby didn't acknowledge her and I pretended to be insulted, sipping my water. Sam was the missing member of the lunch table, an empty chair beside Carly reminding me of that, and I was wondering where the hell she was. My fascination with Sam skyrocketed after I found out her double-life. Every time I saw her, she looked like any other high school girl. She never drove, always bumming a ride from Carly, so she didn't have a car, her clothes had a Goodwill vibe, and whatever the obviously wealthy kids had, Sam didn't. She didn't enjoy her richy life, or at least didn't embrace it.

What confused me the most about this recently realized aspect of Sam's life was that it managed to fly right under my nose for ten fucking _years_. Considering my mom went to college with Mrs. Puckett some twenty odd years ago and she was rich then, Sam had to have had money this entire time. She never let on, never hinted, and went as far as borrowing money from me, which pissed me off because, come on, I had to rely on twenty bucks a month, while she already had a checking account.

I glanced at Carly, still lecturing Gibby, and I wondered if she knew. She _had _to have known, I mean, Sam was the sister Carly never had, and girls told each other everything. Then I changed focus to Gibby. When Gibby was the new kid in eighth grade, I buddied up with him, and since I was always with Carly, who always had Sam, it was sort of assumed that we were a little group. While Sam went out of her way to harass me on a daily basis, she usually turned a cheek to Gibby, only really going to him if either I was unavailable or he had something she wanted, which was next to never. There was no way Gibby and Sam could've had a good friendship without me figuring about _that_, but I was beginning to get skeptical, since, I dunno, she was affluent this entire time and no one suspected it.

"Did you guys know Sam is an heiress?" I asked out of nowhere, justifying it by figuring that if Sam could raise hell in my life for ten years, I could shake a screw loose in hers.

Carly choked on her salad, eyes widening at me. Gibby, who thought my question was a riot and began laughing heartily, saw Carly's reaction, slowly realizing I was more than joking. "There's no way, man," He leaned forward, rubbing his chin. "She's too… unrefined."

"How the heck do you know this, Freddie?" Carly gave me a look of concern. Concern for her best friend's secret getting out, or concern for me when her said best friend found out I was responsible for her secret getting, I wasn't sure. "Sam said something to you?"

"Of course she didn't," I almost laughed at that. I knew all this stuff about Sam, and I found out through accident, not once by Sam intentionally coming to me. "But when her mom and my mom became best friends all over again and I became her damn escort to this thing—"

Carly's jaw dropped. "Oh, _you're _the new escort?"

"She told you," I stated more than questioned. Sam went and ranted about how terrible it was that I was her escort to the only person she trusted, I expected as much.

Gibby spoke up. "Whoa, whoa, so you're telling me that Sam really _is _an heiress?"

"No, she's not," Carly snapped a little too quickly, completely giving it away. I shook my head at her lack of lying skills. Well, she could've been a good liar if she wanted to, since she did it to me. Mentally slapping myself for bringing up hurt feelings, I distracted myself by nodding to Gibby, confirming that Sam Puckett was legally entitled to a _lot _of money.

"Holy shit," Gibby started to simper, the way he did when he was in scamming mode. "_That _could be useful…"

"You're gonna scam Sam?" I raised an eyebrow. "The girl who successfully hid the fact she's some rich bitch for ten years?"

Gibby saw his plan crumble before his eyes. "You're right, I guess. But why would she want to hide that from everyone?"

We looked at Carly, the girl who had an all-access pass to Sam's inner workings. She shrugged. "I don't know."

I was unconvinced. "You don't?"

"I do," She continued with her eating, brushing us off without hesitation. "Am I going to tell you? No."

"I should tell everyone for her," Gibby thought out loud, and I knew it was because Sam, in a fit of disgust, broke his thumb in ninth grade when he asked her out, and three years later, his ego was still bruised and his thumb healed crookedly. "Payback is one wealthy bitch."

Carly, if I wasn't mistaken, _lunged _across the lunch table, grabbing Gibby's shirt. "You tell anyone anything, and I'll kill you!"

She watched over Sam the way a mother would to their young, so I wasn't surprised by her outburst. I was, however, surprised she was so violent about it. Gibby called her bluff, breaking free from her clasp. "I highly doubt you're capable of that, Shay."

"Fine," She sat back in her seat, fixing her bangs. "I'll let Sam know who's behind revealing her secret."

Gibby, who was clearly shaky with that threat, tried to still hold a position of power. "Fine, I won't tell, but only on one condition."

"What?"

"Help me with my chemistry project and my lips will forever be sealed."

Carly, whose true and utter bane of existence was A.P. chemistry, nodded without blinking an eye, reaching her hand out to shake on it. I was surprised she was going to such great lengths to protect her best friend from exposure, which meant one of two things. Either Carly just really took her friendship with Sam that seriously, or Sam had a pretty darn good reason to keep her mouth shut.

"I should've known Sam was rich, I mean, come on. Look at the way she dresses."

I looked at Gibby, wondering what he could've meant by that. Here I thought they way she dressed was plain and humble and none too obvious, and Gibby was the one to point something I clearly missed. Carly looked at him too, amused. "What do you know about fashion?"

"I know that those J. Crew and True Religions she wears don't pay for themselves."

Carly raised her eyebrows, impressed. "You know designer jean brands?"

"I'm gay, remember? Have to keep up appearances," Gibby winked at Carly, which made me laugh out loud, resulting in me getting the evil eye. Carly just loaded up her holy gun and started open fire straight, no pun intended, at morally corrupt Gibby all over again.


	5. Chapter 5

_I have a poll up on my profile, so go vote, por favor._

_Heads up: this story is rated __**M **__for a reason._

* * *

Cotillion rehearsal was reaching the last fifteen minutes of its life, and Sam, whose eyes were glued to the grand clock on the far side of the ballroom wall the entire time, was practically crawling out of her skin to hurry up and get out of there. It was Friday, and in other words, some high schooler or college kid somewhere in Seattle was throwing an alcohol-serving party and Sam had every intention to go.

While there was never really an established open dialogue between us, I didn't hesitate to talk to her the way I used to. "Where's the fire, Smoky?"

Sam barely paid me any attention. "I have less than twenty minutes separating me from freedom, so do _not _ruin it for me."

"Duly noted."

Letting the girl have the rest of rehearsal to prepare her liver and common sense for thorough disregard, I preoccupied my thoughts with what school subjects needed most attention, since exams were still sitting right in front of me. Studying wasn't the ideal way for an eighteen-year-old guy to spend a Friday night during his final year of public education, but it wasn't like I was trying to impress anyone. By the time everyone disbanded after rehearsal and I ridded myself from my monkey suit, I was walking out to the parking lot, keys in hand.

Sam was standing out front, dressed into her black leather jacket and skintight black jeans, concentrating on the phone in her hands. By the way she chewed her lip and frowned, I guessed she was confused. So I took a detour to my car, stopping right in front of her.

"Need a ride?"

"Not from you."

Leaving it at that, I was about to go on my merry way, but then Mrs. Puckett came scurrying towards us, as if she timed this whole thing perfectly. "I'm so happy I ran into the two of you!" She looked at her daughter, then to me. "I just had a word with the dance instructor, and she says you two need to get more comfortable around each other." I didn't like where this was going, and neither did Sam, judging by the look of protest on her face. Either Sam's mom simply ignored it, or she was really not that bright. "I called Mrs. Benson, and she agrees. Now for the sake of the cotillion, I think it would be a marvelous idea if you two spent some extra time together!"

"Mom, it's really not—"

Mrs. Puckett twitched, managing to keep a happy smile on her face. "_Samantha!_" I understood my jumping at Mrs. Puckett's sudden outburst, but when I saw Sam flinch, I was startled. Sam could face down a truck driver and barely falter, let alone the twig in pearls and heels that her mother was. "May I have a _word _with you in private?"

Defeated, Sam stalked off, her mother following, giving me a polite _one moment, please_. The two of them went back inside the building, and through the window, I saw Mrs. Puckett's back to me, but Sam's face expressed loss, not even bothering to put up an argument. I knew I shouldn't have spied on something between family, but for whatever reason, I couldn't help but slyly observe the pair. It didn't do much, though, because Mrs. Puckett did all of the talking, while Sam just stood there, eyes to her shoes. Not even two minutes passed before Sam came back out, walking straight past me, angry as ever.

Before I could run after her, Mrs. Puckett was before me, smoothing down her skirt with a gauzy smile. "My apologies, Freddie. You know how teenage girls can get," I really didn't, but that didn't stop her. "It'll be fun for the two of you to have some bonding time, okay?"

"Right," I was rightfully puzzled. How did Mrs. Puckett manage to shove Sam into the middle of my plans? Not that I had any, but it was obvious that Sam _did._ "We'll see you later, Mrs. Puckett."

She waved me off. "Please, call me Pam."

I had no intention to ever, but I nodded anyway, finishing my path to my car, Sam waiting by the passenger-side door. We both climbed in without much speech, and I began driving off. Sam obviously was iffed, and I couldn't help but feel a little sympathy. "How about I just drop you off wherever you wanted to go?"

"Whatever," She shrugged, looking out of her window, arms over her chest. "I'm not even sure I want to go to that party anymore."

"Where do you wanna go then?"

"I can't go home."

And I couldn't go to mine either. Apparently, my mom was in on this Sam-Freddie bonding time, anything to keep her in the good graces of her recently discovered friend. "How about Carly's?"

"She and Spencer are in Yakima with their grandparents this weekend," She was silent and I knew what was coming next. "Sorry to break your pathetic heart."

There was the Carly insult. It wasn't an evening with Sam if one of those were missing. So, basically, we were stuck with each other, not even our only thing in common able to bail us out, and although it wasn't the worst way to spend my evening, I definitely had higher things on my list of priorities. Driving through the downtown, not really having a game plan, Sam finally sat up. "I have an idea, pull into there."

She pointed to a little strip of stores housing a certain liquor shop and Baskin Robbins. It was the same place I almost ran her over, but Sam said herself she didn't remember that night, so I guess it was mere coincidence. Following her inside, a sketchy-looking fat man in a lumber jack hat was behind the counter, watching _The Price is Right _on a cheap portable TV from the late nineties.

"Hey, Mitch," She greeted, as if they were lifelong buds.

"Well if it ain't mah little Sammy," He smiled, revealing at least three gold teeth. "What can Uncle Mitch do's for ya?"

"The usual."

The man with hair everywhere except his head gave me a look. "This yer boyfrand?"

If Sam could make a noise that simulated gagging up bile instead of actually doing so, then she made that noise. I just stood beside her, unsure what to make of her chum. "He's more of an adversary."

"That's what I said 'bout mah furst wife," He gave a crooked grin which made me feel a little uncomfortable. "Ya think Peter Pan over 'ere can handle the usual?"

Sam shrugged, not bothering to defend my honor. "Throw in a lollipop then."

"You're the only girl who can drink like a sailor," He beamed proudly at Sam and I really started to wonder about the nature of their relationship.

"Yeah, and you're the only person who doesn't give a shit enough to check I.D."

While Mr. Mitch pulled out a brown paper bag and put a little collection of bottles inside, Sam picked up a magazine, carelessly flipping through. Pretending I wasn't feeling as awkward as I was, I picked up a Hershey's bar and read the nutrition facts, analyzing them like they were the cure to cancer.

Sam reached for her pocket to pull out money, but Mitch frowned. "Dis one's on tha house."

A rich girl, well beyond the ability to pay, was getting stuff for free. I wondered if he knew her little secret. Sam finished wrapping up her felony and before I knew it, we were both out in the parking lot, except, the only difference was that Sam was going for the driver's door.

"Let me drive."

This girl, who just got a bagful of free liquor from a textbook sex predator, had to be a fucking comedian. "Nice try."

She was pouting. "I know a place."

It was barely nine o'clock and I was up for cheap thrills, so despite my better judgment, I gave her the keys to my car. Barely even sputtering a thank-you, she climbed in and revved the engine, backing out before I could even fully get my body in the car. I knew I made a big mistake by letting her drive when she was going eighty in a fifty-mile lane on the highway. I didn't even know my car was capable of going that fast.

Next time she asked to drive my car, she would get a hell followed by a harsh no. Assuming that, well, there would be a next time.

* * *

We never ended up at that place Sam mentioned. In order to get there, we had to go through the city, which passed a nightclub, one that caught Sam's eye, and without consulting me, or voicing her change of plans, I sort of had to figure it out when she pulled over and climbed out of the car. I tried to keep up, wondering if this was the original location of Sam's plans, or if she literally just saw the place and decided to go in.

A bouncer guarded the way inside the club, and Sam approached him. Much like that liquor store Mitch guy, the big and beefy bouncer knew her like she was his best pal or something. "Miss Puckett, long time, no see?"

"Had some business," She barely smiled and passed through the velvet rope he opened up for her, holding up a hand when I attempted to follow behind. Sam didn't look back at me. "I brought a friend, don't mind him."

The guy huffed, giving me a hard glare before letting me pass, but what was more interesting to me was that she called me a friend. There was a hallway with thick, velvet red carpeting, a men's bathroom on one side, a women's on the other. Everything was dark, like pitch-black, inside a cave during an Alaskan winter dark. If it weren't for a few candles lighting the hallway, I wouldn't have been able to see my hand in front of my face. Eventually getting to the farthest end, there was vault-looking door. Another strong, terrifying man stood there, opening the door for us, giving Sam a welcoming smile and shooting me a skeptical frown, like I was that thing to find in one of those preschool _What's Wrong with this Picture _puzzles.

Instantly, when I saw the _inside_-inside, my eyes hurt, since the bright lights completely contrasted the dark hallway leading up. A disco-esque floor was in the center, flashing and burning my eyes, raised flooring surrounding the entire perimeter. On the east and west walls were two separate bars that stretched from floor to ceiling. On the north wall was a high DJ booth that seemed to overlook the entire single-room club like a god.

"What's this place?" I leaned over to Sam, who was analyzing the scenery carefully.

Her mouth rose at a corner. "Home."

She was gone, surgically detached from my hip, not even two minutes before we got there. Sam made her way into the dance floor, and I could've sworn the crowd, which was body to body, opened up to let her in. I recognized the occasional senior that went to Ridgeway, a few kids from cotillion rehearsal, and a bunch of people who already graduated several classes before mine, but didn't have what it took to leave Washington, let alone Seattle.

Like it was my second nature, I found an empty seat and planned to sit there until Sam had her fill, or passed out dead, or whichever came first. Pulling out my phone, immersing myself in Angry Birds and pretending I wasn't as a big of a sore thumb as I was, I could feel a good hour whiz by. Scanning the masses of people, I tried to find the disgruntled one dressed like a femme fatale who was more than likely drunk.

Sam's golden hair was absorbing the color of the flashing lights, and my eyes took no time finding her. The girl was hovering along the five-foot marker, probably the shortest person in this room, yet she was standing out and above the crowd, eyes half-closed, glazed over with intoxication and mild satisfaction. I watched as her mouth gasped and mouthed along the words to whatever bubble-gum "club remix" was booming from the speakers, grinding up against people she otherwise had no interest in interacting with. She looked lost and flopped around like she was drowning, drink in hand and hips swaying in a way that screamed _stripper_, but most of all, she looked like she belonged_._

It was sad to think that Sam truly believed her place was in a club, boozing away her free time. I didn't know a fucking clue about anything with her, unless I saw it for my own eyes. And all I saw was a rich blonde with a pretty face, drinking like she wasn't a seventeen-year-old with a future to consider. The white knight inside me wanted to shake her out of all this, introduce her to this thing called _sobriety_, but who was I to boss her around? I was the not-friend that was suddenly thrusted into her company, and although we were urbane to an extent, we were still a good billion miles away from Buddyville.

Going back to my Angry Birds, I kept working towards earning three stars for the level I was on, getting completely absorbed in knocking a red bird into stones with a green pig sitting on top. It was really a funny sight, if I wanted to be honest. A mildly attractive, at least I liked to believe so, dude in his hormonal prime, sitting in a pretty popular club that served booze to minors, and instead of fondling clueless drunk girls, he played Angry Birds while waiting for his rival to finish being one of said drunk girls, so he could return her to her house in the hills. Fucking hilarious.

Things lost its hilarity when I felt my elbow getting knocked, not only screwing up the angle of the bird I was launching, but causing me to look up, Sam being lead right past me with a little group of guys. Sliding my phone back into my pocket, following the trail of Sam and her associates, I tried to figure out who half these pricks were, and where they were taking her.

One was bald in a neo-Nazi sense, with a tribal tattoo around his thick arm, even though he obviously didn't give a shit about Native American culture. Another was tall and rail-thin, hair long and unwashed, his beard probably acting as a storage unit for his face. My personal favorite was the try-too-hard, who tried to look cool with his indoor aviators and fauxhawk, but I could tell by the GAP jeans, which I only knew were GAP because the asshole left the tags on, and Abercrombie t-shirt that he was just another college drop-out bordering on thirty, trying to stay young and ignorant forever.

Sam was, like I predicted, _bombed_, being physically escorted by the skinhead, and I wasn't liking how handsy he was being on her lower back and ass region. I followed them to the back of the club, down a few steps and to a door that was hidden behind the DJ booth, and although I kept my distance, I inched closer when they forced her through the door and looked back with their collective _I'm not up to anything suspicious, god no _glances. Humans had this sixth sense built into their brains that shot a red flag when a situation looked pretty formidable, and I was no exception. When a flare gun went off in my head, the little neurons that made up my brain screaming out SOS's, I immediately beelined for the door.

Physically coercing myself to stop for one fucking second, I tried to devise some sort of game plan. She probably was just going to have a smoke with them, even though I was pretty darn sure she wasn't a smoker. They weren't too threatening looking, just the Three-Stooges equivalent to date rapists. And worst case scenario, if anything resorted to physical violence, I mean, I knew I frequented the gym four times a week since ninth grade for a reason, and yeah, I was a lover, not a fighter per se, but adrenaline was the devil's coffee, right?

Deciding that was enough strategizing, I felt my legs carrying myself towards that door, and I felt my hands shove a path through capering bodies, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what was going through my head. Blood, electric currents that kept my body functioning, and static. That was about it, and that was all I really thought I needed.

The door was heavy, one of those doors that lead outside, and I ignored the DJ who yelled at me for going into an unauthorized zone. I was met with a narrow alley, a dumpster, and an old picnic bench that was mildew-infected. Sam sat atop that bench, try-too-hard guy's mouth on her neck, neo-Nazi's hand snaking up her shirt, and the beard guy was sitting beside them, fumbling with something in his hands.

"_Hey!_" I let out a scream that made the insides of my throat itch, fueled by rage. Creeps were one thing, but creeps that preyed on the helpless, even if the helpless were drunk blondes who had it coming, were the ones who lacked my sympathy.

Using my hands to throw off neo-Nazi's grabby fingers from Sam's stomach, and using my body as a barrier shoved between the try-too-hard guy and Sam. "Get your fucking pervert hands off of her!"

"Who the fuck are you!" Neo-Nazi screeched, roughly grabbing my shirt and throwing me against a wall, replacing his hands when I sunk to the dirty, damp ground.

Carly would never forgive me if she knew what was happening to Sam before my eyes, her mom would surely sue me, and even _Gibby_ wouldn't find it in his heart to forgive me if I let these assholes win. But most importantly, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I let Sam fall victim to these guys.

At the same time, I was a little tied. Neo-Nazi was right, who was I? This perfectly vulnerable drunk blonde's childhood punching bag? Her second cousin, twice removed? My mouth developed a mouth of its own. "She's my fucking _girlfriend_, so get your hands off!"

Sam's eyes widened, then she let out a shaky laugh. "We're n-_no_t toge_thhher!_" She managed to catch eye contact with me. "Fred-d_iee_ is a l_oos_er! Plus he's in love with C_arrrr_ly."

Try-too-hard guy stepped away from Sam, suspicious. I mustered every lying fiber in my being. "S-She's, uh, she's just mad 'cause we had an argument earlier," My voice raised with my confidence. "So get your fucking hands off of her!"

I tried to grab for Sam, but she swatted away. "F-Fuckoff _Ben_son! I don't n_eeeed _saving!"

"You heard the lady," Neo-Nazi, who was about the same height and build as me, stepped about an inch from my face. Call me a prude, or a pansy, but I didn't like people invading my personal space. "Scram, bitch-boy."

I wasn't sure what happened next. Either my knee went into his gut, or my fist went into his jaw. It didn't matter, since I ended up with crunched knuckles and a neo-Nazi at my feet regardless. A wave of animosity overtook me and I kicked this asshole while he was struggling to get up. "You're lucky I'm not a fighter!"

That was a little too cheesy action movie last-laugh for my taste, but it was too late to take anything back, and he was probably too drunk to remember any of this anyway. Neo-Nazi looked to be shitfaced and in pain, he stayed on the ground, writhing in the filth. Looking up from the guy, seeing who was gonna be next to get a piece of me for taking down their comrade, I wasn't shocked when I saw the two other guys not even flinch.

The bearded guy was done with whatever was in his hand, and my stomach sank when I saw him pass a rolled-up dollar to Sam. A little line of white powder was formed in a thin line about the length of my finger on the bench top, and Sam was leaning down, dollar in one nose, a finger sealing the other one.

"_Sam!_" I exploded, throwing try-too-hard guy off of her, grabbing Sam by her waist a little more rough than I intended to. She yelped, dollar flying out of her hand, attempting to fight her way out of my arms. But she was drunk and sloppy and I had no issue hanging onto her. "Sam, we're going _home!_"

The beard guy stood up. "Hey, man, are we gonna have a problem!"

"I dunno," I glowered at him, then at the other one. Lightly tapping my foot against neo-Nazi's thigh on the ground, I smirked. "Do you wanna end up like him!"

* * *

"I've seen enough Mexican cartel movies to know that it _was _cocaine!"

Carly remained silent, but I could hear the patter of her pacing footsteps on the other end of the line. "Where are you guys now?"

"I couldn't take Sam home with her being drunk and having cocaine on her lip," I looked at the blonde who was collapsed on my couch. "My mom's at work, so I brought her to my place."

"Okay, good," She pondered. "Go to my door, there should be a spare key in the potted plant. Just put Sam in my bed and I'll try to leave Yakima early."

Following Carly's instructions, I found the little fern by their door that had seen better days. Digging a finger into the dirt, I felt around for a key. "Carly, I can't find it."

"Check under our doormat."

I did such, finding dust bunnies and a spider, but no keys. "Nope."

"Dear god—_Spencer!_" I heard her brother yelling back at her. "Where's the hidden spare key?" Spencer's voice was going, but it was too muffled to understand what he was saying. "Are you _kidding_? You hid it _inside _the apartment? And you call _me _the dumb one!"

Well, shit. I had no idea what to do. Carly cleared her throat, focusing back at me. "My brother's an idiot sometimes."

"What am I gonna do, Carly?"

"My aunt's baby shower is in the morning, and I _can't _miss that," I could practically hear the light bulb popping up over her head. "Can you please just hide Sam out at your place tonight? I'll leave around nine tomorrow, and be back before noon, okay?"

I thought for a second. Sam, in my house overnight? My mom adored Sam, since Sam was the petite and Aryan beauty she never was, but still, she would've had a fit if she found out I had a girl overnight. But I really had no alternative solutions. "Fine. I'll see you later."

Before I hung up, Carly spoke. "Freddie?"

"Hm?"

"Thank you."

We said our goodbyes, and I went back into my living room, Sam still lying on the couch. I had no idea where to go from there. I couldn't leave her on the couch and have my mom walk in and see her, and I couldn't go and put her in my mom's bed. That left one bed in the house.

Carrying her to my bedroom and carefully putting her on top of my sheets, I thought for a second. Sam was practically out like a light, so there wasn't much I could actively do for her. Going down the path of preparing for the inevitable hangover, I went into my kitchen for a banana, Saltines, and I even found it in myself to give her one of my Gatorades I saved for workouts. Placing all of this on my nightstand beside her, I wondered if there was more I could do. Knowing what happened last time, I grabbed my trashcan and put it next to her, and knowing her jacket and jeans were probably not the best to sleep in, I went into my dresser for an old t-shirt and sweats.

Bedless with a whole ten hours stretching before me, all I could do was pull up my desk chair and wait for Sam to wake up.


	6. Chapter 6

_Plot twist._

* * *

I went out for donuts and coffee, because god knew I needed it. Sleeping for six hours in a stupid desk chair did bad things to my neck, and somehow, I came to the solution that deep-fried dough and coffee bean juice would make everything better. It was six in the morning, most of Seattle sleeping off their Friday night, so I managed to walk down to the donut shop a block over and back hopefully before Sam woke up.

In the lobby, two coffees and a pink box of diabetes in hand, I managed to check my mailbox before heading up. Bills for my mother, catalogues for my mother, a postcard from her half-sister vacationing in the French Polynesia for my mother, basically a whole wad of crap for my mother. But then I got to the bottom of the mail pile, and a little envelope with that familiar torch emblem caught my eye. There my name was, Fredward M. Benson, printed right in the middle.

Not wanting to accept my fate in the lobby with the creepy doorman giving me the evil eye for walking all over his freshly mopped floor, I headed straight to my loft and into my room.

"_Ah!_"

Me and Sam let out the same yelp at the same time, my hands flying over my eyes, dropping the box of donuts on the floor, and backing out of my room. Somehow, I'd forgetting she was in there and I just so happened to walk in on her, finding her topless, pulling a clean shirt over her head. Luckily, I didn't see anything of hers, just her bare back towards me. Out in the hallway, I dropped my forehead against my shut door, bracing myself. A half-naked girl named Sam was almost caught by her worst nightmare named Freddie, and she was about to kill him, even though it was _his _room.

Figuring out some sort of apologetic speech, I paced back and forth, wondering how to approach this situation. I couldn't just leave her in there forever, but I couldn't just brush it off like a champ. Luckily, Sam made the decision for me. My door opened, and there was Sam, pink box in hands, already working on a donut. She saw the coffee I was holding. "Oh good, _coffee._"

"S-Sorry," I handed over the coffee I got her, and followed her back in my room when it was deemed safe again.

"Mention it again and I'll castrate you."

And that was that. Sam's ability to just forget was a redeeming quality, despite the rest of her recklessness. Noticing I managed to drop my letter with the donuts, Sam picked it up, raising an eyebrow at the label. "NYU?"

I nodded carefully.

"Is this your acceptance letter?"

"Or rejection letter."

She rolled her eyes at me, handing it over. I didn't want to open it with Sam down my throat, so I tucked it in one of my folders on my desk. That little package of paper scared the hell out of me, and I was in no rush to see what it said. Focusing my nerves on Sam, I watched her nibble her donut on my bed, wiping her fingers on my shirt she was wearing. Neither one of us addressed the sheer boorishness of her wearing my clothes on my bed before seven in the morning, and I already knew Sam wasn't ever going to bring it up, so after a momentary debate, I swallowed the coffee burning in my mouth.

"Remember last night?"

She hesitated. She fucking hesitated, I could see the way her eyes shot away from the donut in her hand, and how her chewing slowed down that she hesitated. "No."

She was in my bed, in my clothes, after I dragged her ass out of a bad scenario, and I bought her fucking donuts and coffee. I put up with her crap for ten years, I stayed out of her life for ten years, and considering the most recent chain of events, right up to the moment when I was arm-in-arm with her, wearing a tuxedo, and everything that followed, I was damn well entitled to even the tiniest grain of information. Especially if I had Carly, her mother, and my mother to report back to.

"Bullshit, Sam. Talk."

"There's nothing _to _talk about, so don't fucking snap at me, Benson."

Of course I should've expected prying something out of Sam was harder than pulling teeth. The last time I tried to get something out of hungover Sam, I stormed off and didn't hear from her again until I was eating fucking dinner in her fancy-ass house with her mom. I had to take this carefully if I wanted to get anywhere.

"We've known each other for ten years, Sam. Why aren't we friends?"

She dropped her donut into the box beside her. "Time doesn't mean shit."

"Okay, so why else aren't we friends, then?" I had to make the first move, since I wasn't dealing with the average sort of pain-in-the-ass person. I was dealing with Sam, who wouldn't even say thanks if you saved her life, let alone saving her from being molested and doing cocaine. "I think you can be pretty cool, and all this time, I've tried to be nice and be your friend."

"You think you're fucking Bill Withers?"

Good holy mother of god. This girl was so difficult without even trying. "I'm not saying you have to lean on me, I just would just like to be able to talk to you without all this crap!"

She narrowed her eyes at the ground, but I was pretty sure that gaze of hate was meant for me. "What crap, Benson?"

"Don't play dumb, Puckett," I only used her last name when I was seething with her, so saying I was getting pretty pissed was an understatement. "With all this anger and fighting and fucking _hate _between us!"

"Well _sorry_ that I wasn't born in the fucking sixties and don't share your fucking peaceful ideology."

My fists tightened. It was like playing the same damn video game level over and over and over with Sam. It was frustrating and maddening and if I kept playing anymore, I would've ended up throwing my remote control at the game over screen. Yet I found myself still fighting and pushing and shoving my way into her, and I had no idea _why. _In eighth grade, I determined she was a lost cause and moved on with my life, and barely four years later, I was trying my damn well hardest to establish a _friendship_ for some reason that god only knew. Life had a fucking hystericalway of operating.

"That's a load of shit, and you know it! My 'peaceful ideology' clearly went out the damn window when I punched a guy in the face last night for putting his hands on you!"

She recoiled, all heat leaving her voice. "I never asked you to be my goddamn savior. I don't need some macho asshole running around and saving me from myself."

"You don't get it!" She may have gotten quiet, but I was getting fucking started. "I don't plan my entire fucking schedule around when Sam Puckett is in trouble!" Her knuckles were whitening, eyes not daring to tear away from the carpet. There was a good couple feet between me in my desk chair and her on my bed, yet the room's size cut in half. "When you just so happen to be _drunk _in the middle of some bad predicament, and I just so happen to find you there, I go and make sure you're gonna be okay! I'm not trying to be your goddamn guardian!"

"Then why the hell did I wake up in your bed, huh?" She snapped her eyes straight at me, and if a look could freeze hell over, then it was that look she was giving. "You could've dropped me off at my place, or even in a fucking alley for all I cared, but no, I ended up here!"

I crossed my arms defensively. "Circumstances lead up to it."

"Who's the one full of shit, now?" She laughed, but it was obvious that nothing was remotely close to funny. "Why'd you tell those guys you were my fucking boyfriend?"

This bitch was getting to be way too fucking much. "So much for not remembering last night," She brushed me off with a scoff. "I told them I was your boyfriend because I thought _nemesis _was a little unfitting."

Sam rolled her eyes. She had the fucking audacity to roll her eyes, like this was all some goddamn joke to her. "Why do you have to be such a damn drama queen, Benson?"

"I've been in direct contact with you for a decade, and in that entire decade, you've only fucked with me! Excuse me if I believed that was grounds for establishing a rivalry between us!"

Right when I was getting over this, right when I was concluding that trying to work with Sam was pointless, right when I was about to just sit my happy ass on my couch and wait for Carly to pick up Sam and escort her stage left out of my life, Sam goes and throws me a curveball.

"Ask me why we're enemies, Freddie."

Her voice was subdued, which threw me off, but what really was a jaw-dropping thing for me was that she called me by my name. Not my last name, not some shitty insult, but _Freddie_, the abbreviated version of the name on my damn birth certificate. My breath was bated, to say the least.

"What?"

"You always ask why we're not friends, so let's go for some reversal," She was meticulous with her words, calm in a way that iced over the entire room. "Ask me why we're _enemies_."

Maybe, just fucking _maybe, _we were getting somewhere. "Okay, Sam, why are we enemies?"

She laughed. Not even laughed, she _snorted_, like she was like a pig. Sam was Wilbur, with her fucking little spider writing out witty little sayings in her web above her piggy little head, because this was all some asinine kid's story to her. "We're not enemies."

I was confused, as well as pissed, but mostly confused. But this was _Sam_, after all, so I got what I bargained for. "Then what the hell are we?"

"We're limbo," She shrugged, eating her donut slowly in a very un-Sam, gorge-free way. "Not friends, not enemies, just some sorry in-between. Quit overthinking it. We clearly aren't gonna get along the way people do, and we can't live our lives without interaction, so we're limbo."

"Limbo," I repeated, and she just nodded, taking more interest in her donut than I knew she actually had. "Fine. I can live with that—"

"Good, now you can shut up."

"—so tell me why you were about to snort cocaine last night. And don't you _dare_ try to act like you don't remember."

She groaned, not even angry anymore, just irritated. "It wasn't cocaine."

"Then what the hell was it?"

"Fucking pixie dust, Benson."

"Every time I run into you, you're either drunk or in the process of becoming drunk," Angry Freddie was coming back up, and I was sure I was gonna get hell from my doctors next checkup because of my blood pressure. "And while I thought the table dancing was adorable, and fishing your passed out body off a floor was a nice way to spend my night, I kinda have to draw the line at you getting felt up by three creeps and almost breathe in a narcotic through your nose!"

"Quit trying to save—"

"To save you, yeah I fucking got that the first billion times, Sam! Come up with a new deflection tactic!" I watched her carefully, watched her mouth squirm as she poked and prodded at her donut. "Where is the cocky Sam that takes pride in her brute honesty? Where's the Sam that can speak her mind without giving a shit what anybody thinks? 'Cause right now," It was my turn to give her a look of hellfire. "All I see is a fucking hypocrite who hides behind big words and profound statements."

I struck a chord. I felt it, I heard it. Silence agonizingly passed by, one painful second at a time, and right before I was gonna come up with a gentler statement, Sam narrowed her eyes at me. "You want the fucking truth, Benson? You really want me to tell you why I did what I did last night? Want me to be brutally honest?"

All the hate in her voice made me think that I pushed her too far. But there was no backing down. If I was faced with a bear in the wild, I would have to stand my ground and not move a muscle. "Fire away."

"I did it because I really don't give a flying fuck," I would've guessed she was deflecting again, but I heard that quiver in her voice, almost inaudible, and that was the most real emotion I had ever seen come from Sam. "I don't care about you, I don't care about cotillion, and I don't fucking care about being perfect anymore."

"I never said you weren't perfect, Sam."

"I'm not talking about you, you dipwad."

"Then who are you talking about?" I leaned forward, not daring to get closer to her, but to show I was there for her by leaning. It made no sense, really, but it was all I had. "I'm sure I can relate."

Hostility. Hostility summed up Sam in one word. All this confession wasn't leaving her vulnerable and broken, but just _pissed _and resentful of me for asking. "You some rich bitcht?"

"Well, no—"

"Hate your stepfather?"

"I don't have—"

"Ever had a real conversation with my mom?"

"Not—"

"Then you can't and won't ever relate, asshole."

"Maybe I never will," I looked at her carefully, trying my best to soften up both my face and my voice. "And maybe you'll always think I never will, but amuse yourself, Puckett. You think I'm gonna ruin your life if I knew more than just your name," I gave one of those laughs that doctors gave when they tried to make a joke after you were diagnosed with terminal illness. "But, honestly, I don't think I care enough to go to great lengths to destroy you."

Apathy apparently won her over, because Sam-who-eats-everything dropped her donut, not even bothering to lick the powdered cocaine-looking sugar off her fingertips. "You're not so bad, loser."

"Yeah, well, you are."

I smirked, sort of to ease the tension. She panned the conversation, flopping onto her back on my bed, fingers laced behind her head. "This still doesn't mean we're friends."

Honestly, I didn't expect anything less. "Limbo, yeah, I got that."

Things remained quiet and, dare I say, peaceful. I always theorized that the day Sam and I could reside agreeably in the same room would also be the day the world ended. But there we were, Sam trying to sleep off more of her hangover, and me relishing in the silence. It was still pretty early in the morning and right when I could feel myself slipping back into unconscious, Sam spoke up, still fronting self-assurance as she always had been.

"One of these days, Benson."

It was simple and ambiguous. But I knew what it meant. Especially by the sound of so much qualm in her voice, I knew what it meant. The stars were realigning, history was being rewritten, and everything between us was becoming one big, giant hoax. A paradox. It was unsettling and scary and totally threw me off, but it was happening, and neither one of us could help it. Limbo was becoming irrelevant.

Sam Puckett and Freddie Benson were looking out to actually, just _maybe _becoming friends.

* * *

The walls were melting around me and I could feel the collar of my shirt absorbing my nervous sweat. My hands were twitching and if my heart rate went up even a fraction of a beat more, I would go right into cardiac arrest. Staring down at the fateful little envelope on my desk, mentally at my most fragile state, I tried to find some way to muster up the courage to slide my finger through the seal of someone's spit and dried adhesive. Five months prior, I was mailing out my application to NYU and it was surreal to think all this time passed and I was already on the edge between kid and college.

Chewing the skin around my thumbnail, I hastily took the paper in my hand. When I got my Stanford letter, I opened it and tossed it without hesitation. But I didn't _want _Stanford, I wanted NYU. Growing up, I always watched the news with my father, and in middle school, I joined the A/V club, so naturally, I dreamt of being a broadcasting journalist. NYU was a prime journalism school in the country, and I wanted it more than anything. And so here I was in my room, the making or breaking point of my dream physically in the palm of my hand.

My dad's alma mater was Stanford, the same place my mom grew up, so the only place my mom expected me to go to school was Stanford Med and follow in Dr. Michael Benson's footsteps, minus the whole death part. Yet here I was, NYU letter in my hands, my mom not even knowing I was applied in the first place. My mom and I had a healthy relationship, since she was my only family, so not only did I feel anxious about getting accepted or not, I also felt guilty for betraying her only motherly wish. That didn't stop me from going to NYU behind her back.

I didn't even know why I was wigging out so bad, considering the fact that I wasn't even sure if I was accepted. In a weird way, I was partially hoping for a rejection. It would destroy my dream and leave Stanford Med as my only option, but then I wouldn't have to sit my mother down and talk to her about considering NYU. But maybe if I stopped being a damn pansy and quit stalling this whole letter-opening process, I'd actually lay half my anxiety to rest. Closing my eyes because I was a dramatic little bitch, I opened the letter with licked lips.

_Dear Fredward M. Benson_, That was as far as I could read without projectile vomiting up my nerves. Sucking in a breath and holding it there until my head spun, I forced myself to keep going on. _Congratulations!_

My stomach dropped from my lower abdomen all the way to the center of the earth. Congratulations meant yes which meant acceptance which meant a conversation with my mom that I had always hoped to avoid. I lived with a perpetual need to please my mom because if I disappointed her with a bad grade or detention or forgot to make my bed, she'd get teary. She immediately associated any sort of distress with the loss of my father, which was probably unhealthy, but I was no psychoanalyst. I was just her one and only son, the living reminder of her deceased husband, and I betrayed her by applying to a completely non-medical college when she made it clear that Stanford was my future and I silently obliged.

And here I was, _acceptance_ letter from my dream school in hand, and instead of being overwhelmed with joy and bouncing off the walls because all my years of hard work had paid off, I was hit in the face with a new level of heavy conscious and solicitude. I didn't even bother to finish reading my acceptance letter, I just sat at my desk, the heels of my hands pressed into my eye sockets, wondering if NYU was even fucking worth upsetting my mom.

"Freddie!" My mom called for me and I instantly panicked, shoving the letter in my desk drawer, as if I was looking at _Playboy _instead. To be honest, I would've preferred being caught with porn than caught with the NYU letter. My door opened, my mom poking her head inside. "I'm leaving for work, sweetie. Dinner's on the stove."

I was struck with overwhelming guilt. "Thanks, ma. I'll clean up, okay?"

"Thank you. Have a good night, okay?"

"I will. Go save lives," I smiled at her, a little forced, but she didn't notice. She left for the hospital in her Tinker Bell scrubs and as soon as I heard our loft door close behind her, I got up from my chair and flopped face first onto my bed with the intent to suffocate myself. Eventually my brain throbbed from lack of oxygen and the lingering smell of boozed Sam, so I flopped onto my back, staring at my ceiling, hoping to find the answer to all my problems encrypted in the drywall.

After ten minutes of pretending I could hide out in my bedroom for the rest of my life, I forced myself to get up and eat dinner. But no amount of my mom's tomato soup and no amount of wiping down countertops my mom already bleached could distract me from the fact I was completely and utterly confused.


	7. Chapter 7

_There are people out there actually reading this sad, crappy excuse for a fic? I am honestly honored from all the follows, faves, and reviews. It means a lot and I cannot even begin to say how completely thankful I am for such positive and undeserving response to something I simply do in my free time. _

* * *

"Something on your mind?" Gibby gave me a sideways look during lunch and had he not been experimenting with a flamboyantly feminine accent, I wouldn't have heard him at all.

Shaking myself from my thoughts, I gave him a look that tried to demonstrate alertness, but ended up looking like a deer in the headlights. "No, why?"

He shrugged, spooning the school's excuse for chili in his mouth. "You've been a zombie all day."

I dropped my sandwich, rinsing away the rye bread stuck in my teeth with my water. "Really? Sorry."

"Seriously, what's up?"

Gibby and I had a bromance, and if it wasn't for almost five years of problem swapping and Xbox LIVE sessions together, I would've come up with a lie to disregard the whole thing. But the truth was that I was in a pickle with my college options and I needed his blunt and probably irrelevant advice. "Got accepted into NYU."

His jaw dropped. "NYU _and _Stanford? And I thought getting into Washington State was impressive."

I felt like a bitch all of a sudden. Here I was, accepted into two of the best schools in the country, short of Ivy League, and yet I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. My life-shattering predicament was suddenly sounding as petty as deciding if I wanted cake or pie for dessert. I stirred in my silence, trying to come up with something to say that didn't make me sound like an unappreciative asshole.

"You don't know which to choose?" He asked in place of my silence, and I reminded myself that _that _was why I loved Gibby.

"I want NYU, but my mom has been planning for me to go to Stanford since the moment I was conceived."

"Tell her that it's your life and you want NYU."

Of course it _sounded _simple. "Stanford is my dad's alma mater."

"Oh," He frowned, realizing the sudden stickiness of the situation.

"She doesn't even know I applied."

"_Oh,_" Gibby repeated himself, stroking his chin, trying to look like an elderly kung fu sensei but ultimately looking like a beardless douche bag. "Well, uh, you can't live under mommy's thumb forever."

Annoyed with his insensitive dismissal, I shot him a glare. "Says the guy whose mom is falsely under the impression her firstborn son is gay."

He shrugged, not even bothered by my harshness. "Like I said. Go to Stanford, man. California babes are where it's at."

"You like guys, remember?" I reminded him. I knew I'd get an answer that would appeal to my unbloomed sex life the most, but I couldn't help but want to shove the uneaten part of my sandwich in his eye. "Besides, I'm going to college for a _degree_, not a wife."

"Never said anything about a wife," He pointed a finger at me, as if to prove a point. "The school part of college sucks and New York women will only make it that much worse. So at least go to a place where you can blow off some steam."

"I can blow off steam by ripping your head off," Sighing, I accepted the fact that Gibby, my right-hand, my magic eight ball, my bro, would be a little less than helpful. "Just forget it, I'll figure something out."

"Whatever you say," He was quiet for all of thirty seconds before he cleared his throat. "How are you and Carly?"

I recapped my water bottle, sinking into my seat. "Same as always."

"Sorry to hear that," Gibby sheepishly shrugged and I could tell he was searching for advice. "Maybe you should go out and start, I don't know, dating?"

The thought of that made me shift uncomfortably. My heart was still a little sore from getting dropped out of Carly's hands, to put it in a sissy way, and I wasn't exactly ready to put myself out there. "And risk getting shot down again?"

"Fear is the heart of love," He batted his eyelashes and I wondered what romantic comedy he got that from. When I rolled my eyes, he leaned back with a look of determination. "How about we rid you of your virgin status, for starters?"

He said it more as a statement than a question. "That's hands-down your worst idea yet."

"Oh, come on, man. Chicks dig a guy with experience."

"No thanks," I pictured the idea of getting down and dirty with some random girl. My nerves would be raw and the tension would be too much. "Unlike _some _people," I pointedly looked at him. "I treat the first time as something special."

"How noble of you," He said flatly, shaking his head as if he was just graced with his life's greatest disappointment. Ignoring his attempts to assist me, more specifically my libido, I left the conversation open and hanging so I could go back to my gut-wrenching predicament. But cue Gibby to break the silence again. "Tell me about Sam."

_That _made my eyebrows raise a little. "You know Sam, just as much as I do."

"Yeah, but you get to see the _riche magnifique _side of her."

Shrugging, I didn't know what to say. "I know she can waltz in four variations, has perfect posture when she wants to, and possesses an opinion on _everything._"

"What does that mean?"

"She just speaks her mind." Sam always had something to say about _everything_, whether it was her delighted opinion of the salmon filet planned to be served at the ball, or if it was her thoughts on how ridiculous her dress looked, or even as small as how the violin player in the five-piece orchestra looked remarkably like the human version of the candlestick in _Beauty and the Beast_. I didn't even think she wanted me to know her opinion, she just saw something and instinctively let out her thoughts. Which was completely contradictory, since she was so shut up about the details of her life around everyone.

"She's hot," Gibby nodded, which for some out-of-body reason, made my face flush. I thought I was a little mental for thinking she was actually pretty attractive, so it was sort of odd to see that other guys, aside from douche bags who liked to feel up drunken girls, saw her the same way.

"You're gonna go after _Sam?_"

"No way, man," He held up the thumb Sam broke. "Learned my lesson to not fuck with lit dynamite."

She _was _lit dynamite, wasn't she? Anyone brave enough to face her either had to figure out how to put out the fuse and not get their eyebrows blown off, or they had to brace themselves for loud noise and body-harming impact. Jamming Sam out of my head, as well as Carly and Gibby, I tried to get back to focusing on what the hell to do about my college options; crush my mom or sign my life off to a medical career I didn't want. I was too afraid to predict what my mom would do if we had that talk, but I wasn't willing to think of all the time and effort needed to be a doctor. I was hardly able to dissect a frog back in freshman biology, so I had no idea how I'd handle the blood and guts I'd be stuck elbow-deep in.

Lunch came and went, and I hardly possessed a coherent thought as I walked into my history class. My brain was swarming in a stew of guilt, anxiety, and overwhelming pressure to do something to instantly remedy my life. I couldn't bring myself to hurt my mom, but I was starting to get angry about being so out-of-control over my own _life_. It wasn't fucking fair that I had to please my mom because she was too much of a basket case to talk to a damn therapist or something.

In my whirlwind of frustration, I didn't notice I snapped the pencil in my hand. I didn't even really remember sitting in my seat, but when I took five seconds out of my mental freak-out, I saw Carly giving me a quizzical look. "Want to talk about it?"

Carly knew my mom and knew how she could get. I hoped she would offer some form of wisdom. "Got accepted into NYU and Stanford."

"Congratulations!" Carly smiled, wrapping her arms around my bicep in a hug. I was too overwhelmed to feel the butterfly reaction that normally would've followed. "That's _so _impressive, Freddie!"

"Thanks," I winced. More guilt hit me, since I was basically caught between a cushioned rock and a nice place. "It's just—"

"You don't know which to choose?"

"Sort of. I've always wanted NYU, but my mom wants me to go to Stanford and follow in my dad's footsteps."

"I see now," Nodding to herself, I could see Carly fish around for some sort of advice. "You don't want to upset your mom, but you don't want to do something you don't love."

This was why I loved her so much. She just understood me without even trying and attempting to find someone else who did better than her was near impossible. "You understand it perfectly."

"Ask yourself if it's worth losing your dream, or in reverse, if it's worth breaking your mom's heart."

She summed up my entire internal battle in one sentence. "I have, and that's where I'm stuck."

"Family is family. Your mom does so much for you," I already understood where she was taking this conversation. "And if my mother was still alive, I'd want to keep her happy."

She wasn't trying to make me feel guilty, emphasis on the word _trying_. Letting out a harsh breath, I was getting so sick of people using deceased loved ones to force me into a corner. Suddenly, I thought of Spencer. "What about Spencer? Didn't your dad want him to go to law school?"

Carly shrugged, which made me suddenly irritable. I was next to _never _anything negative with Carly. "That's different."

"How? He was expected to be a lawyer and now he's an artist," Minus a neurotic mother, me and Spencer were in a very similar boat.

"I dunno, Spencer was just _born _to be an artist, y'know?"

I wasn't sure how to take that last statement. "And I wasn't _born _to be a journalist?"

"You're blowing this out of proportion," She shook her head, like I was a damn drama queen. "You've never really talked about it before."

"Because it's the little thing that I remember my dad by," I tried to come off as less distempered as I was. "It's not something I like putting out there."

She picked up on my attitude, getting defensive. "Well, how was I supposed to know that?"

"I didn't expect you to, I just wanted your opinion on which college to go to," Had I not been in the middle of class with her, my voice would've been raised a little bit more.

"Well if you're so set on being a journalist, then go to NYU."

I would've taken her opinion with a grain of salt, but she said it with this underlying bitchiness. "Thanks, Carly."

She snorted out a response, focusing all her attention on her notebook. I felt antsy, it was hard for me to sit still. My foot kept jiggling, I constantly shifted in my seat, looking from the board to the clock to the board to the teacher to my notes to the clock and so forth. Carly and I argued before, but I usually apologized in seconds to stay on her good side. This little brannigan of ours was different to me because I felt suddenly entitled to stick to my guns. I didn't even know who was in the wrong, or if someone even was, but I was pumped with this unexplainable force to stand my ground.

The closest Carly had gotten to apologizing was delivering those cupcakes, but I didn't even want an apology for this. She stated that I should make my mom happy, since that's what she'd do if she had her mom, and that she didn't see me as a journalist. For the past few years, I was the one to keep her informed about the things going on in the world, to help her with her current event projects, and she knew my grades in English were always stellar. Those were some prime journalistic traits.

On the other hand, I was a little disheartened. The girl whose opinion meant everything to me didn't see me pursuing the thing I wanted most, which would put a damper on anyone's mood. Let alone if they were no longer on easy speaking terms with aforementioned girl.

Thunking my head against the desk, I massaged my temples to relieve the pressure building up, both mentally and physically.

* * *

I was so out of it during cotillion rehearsal. My steps were becoming robotic and thrown off, I held Sam as if her skin was made of white-hot metal, and even when Sam began stating her opinions on whatever caught her attention around her, I barely mustered up the attentiveness to nod along.

When I got home from school, I immediately went to my laptop to put facts and figures up to everything. After searching and scouring, nothing was really resolved. Journalism was a dying career since the new wave of technology was destroying newspaper businesses, and broadcast journalism was pretty competitive since all the already-seasoned journalists were switching to that field. So out of college, I'd most likely be broke with a useless degree. Being a doctor was no better, since I'd spend a good eight years in college and then go onto residency, which was an added on three to ten years. I didn't want to spend my entire young life in school studying something I hardly cared about. The only upside was a nearly-guaranteed job that potentially could pay a _lot._ With the economy the world was in a crisis over, any job, especially a well-paying job was a good thing.

So even the facts came out about fifty-fifty, much to my utter grief. This entire thing was a fucking toss-up, I could flip a damn coin to determine my future. The thought of that made me feel a little belittled. Thoughts in general were making me feel belittled. One tiny thought lead to another that lead to another that lead to another that snowballed to the point where I was a drone, practically drooling as I had an all-out civil war in my neurological programming.

"Look, if you're gonna be awkward about the other day—" I vaguely heard Sam rant before my brain was encapsulated in worst-case-scenarios of what would happen if I chose either college all over again.

Then I felt a sharp stab in my left ear. I tuned into the world to see Sam's hand lowering from the same area as my ear, realizing she flicked me. I would've given her a scowl or yelped or something, but I thought that I started to deserve it. I deserved to hurt for even considering disappointing my mom, I deserved to prepare for pain, since I'd be feeling it every day at Stanford. It was so astronomically—

"_Benson!_"

"Huh—what?" I looked down at Sam, who was narrowing her eyes at me. "What were you saying?"

"Can I tell you without zoning out for five fucking seconds?"

No promises. "Yeah, sure."

"If you're gonna go all weird for whatever Saturday was—"

Saturday. I hardly had the time to compute whatever the hell the morning after saving Sam from disaster was. I had bruised knuckles and leftover donuts to prove that everything between me and Sam wasn't something from an alternate dimension, that we both demonstrated enough decorum to show the potential for a real friendship, not whatever limbo crap Sam wanted to call it. Sam was vicious to me the entire course of our acquaintanceship, so saying I was relatively thrown off that she wasn't half as bad as I assumed would be an understatement. It was funny how drunken vulnerability and richy-richness gave me such a new perspective on the she-demon. If I neglected to see the life she really lived, I probably also misread her as a person—

"_Ow, fuck,_" I hissed, my knees slightly buckling at the pain in my foot. Seeing that Sam stomped full force on my toes, I began to rethink the whole misreading thing I had going. "The hell was that for?"

"You were doing it again!"

"Okay, fine, you have my undivided attention. Out with it."

She got defensive. "If you're gonna go all truant on me because of whatever Saturday was, then I can find a new partner."

My golden opportunity to get out of this fancy cotillion crap. I'd have my evenings back to do whatever _I _wanted. Which consisted of me sitting alone in my room, studying, watching the news, and after a recent turn of events, debate my future until I was sick. "No, I'm good. It's not you."

"Then what is it?"

I wondered why she cared. "It's nothing."

"Like fuck it isn't," She rolled her eyes, which I noticed were an uncanny shade of cerulean. Cerulean like the ocean, like the sea, like the place I was drowning in thoughts I couldn't handle. I needed CPR. "I'm stuck dancing with a human sack filled with pudding, so you better talk."

I smirked at her analogy, sort of touched by her concern, even if her concern was fueled with her own intentions. "You're gonna think it's petty bullshit."

She looked sort of challenged. "Try me."

Well, here went nothing. "I got accepted into NYU and Stanford."

Gibby, Carly, and anybody with even a gram of manners would go all _congratulations, you're so smart!_ Sam was the obvious exception. "So you're a nerd. The problem?"

"I've always wanted NYU, but I'm expected to go to Stanford."

"We're expected a lot of things."

She was being so simple and insensitive, but not in the way Gibby did, who was uninterested with the whole thing, and not in the way Carly did, who treated it like Stanford was my duty. "Yeah, well, I'm just stuck."

"Because your mom wants you to live some life you don't really want?"

She didn't know about my dad, she knew my mom was protective and in her opinion, insane, but she didn't know about the big picture. "It's, uh, it's more complicated than that."

There was nothing said for a while. I thought the whole thing was ultimately dropped, that I was on my own again, until Sam smacked her lips. "Look, if you want, I can tell you what I think."

This had to be interesting. "I'm all ears."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by the fucking dogma. Have the balls to follow your intuition. It somehow already knows what you want to become. Everything else is secondary."

I didn't expect her to be rich, I didn't expect her to be as big as a partier as she was, I didn't expect a bunch of shit I discovered about Sam throughout the few weeks I was her cotillion escort. But I _especially _didn't expect her to be a fucking fortune cookie, a fortune cookie for my, Freddie fucking Benson's, life. And on top of that, she hit the nail on the damn head. In fact, she beat that nail until it was broken and bruised and crying for mercy. She was right. It was _my _life, I get one shot at a life, and I didn't even know what dogma meant, but she sounded like she knew what she was talking about. She didn't decide for me, but she managed to put some seriously needed points on NYU's scoreboard.

"That's actually kinda smart. Uh, thanks, Sam."

"Don't thank me. Thank Steve Jobs."

Since I was a techie at heart, a total PearPhone fanboy, I was shocked that she knew who Steve Jobs was, let alone was able to quote him. "You know who that is?"

"CEO of Pear before he passed away?" She laughed, an understated laugh, but still a laugh. "Yeah, I know. I know he's, like, your god or whatever."

I smiled, which made her glower a little, but that was _big_ to me. Steve Jobs, before his death, was sort of the unspoken hero, not nearly at the level people knew who Bill Gates was, or at least to my knowledge, he wasn't. So Sam knowing him enough to effectively quote him hit me in my nerdy heart. "You just earned some points in my book, you know that?"

"Oh, joy," Ignoring the sarcasm in her voice, I smiled a little more until my cheeks hurt and I had to stop. "Besides, if you disagreed with my advice, I could throw that it was Steve Jobs quote at you."

"What are you doing after this?"

Freezing, I realized what I just said. I had a two-second thought of getting information from her the same way she did from me, and my brain transferred that into making my mouth move without censoring it. Sam was gonna think I was hitting on her, which I _wasn't_, and throw some Carly-loving insult at me before laughing in my face.

So when Sam said, "Nothing with you," I wasn't all that shocked.

* * *

Despite her forgoing on my accidental invitation, it was sort of an unspoken agreement to not say anything as Sam followed behind me to my car, something that felt a little too familiar to be comforting. I revved the engine, trying to fathom what _exactly _she was up to. I wasn't sure if she just wanted a ride home, or to go to my place, or for me to stop somewhere along the way, so I circled round and round the downtown district, probably eating up a ton of gas in the process.

Sam breathed out in a way that made her lips vibrate. "My sister's birthday is today."

Had we not been at a red light, I would've crashed into something. Sam _wasn't _an only child? Spoiled and bitter rich girl had to share with a sister? My head swarmed with questions. How old was she? Why hasn't she ever been brought up? I decided to take the path of the idiot. "Er, well, happy, uh, birthday."

"Thanks," She bluntly stated, contemplating in her lack of conversation. Contemplating what, I had no idea. "She likes butterflies. Like, a lot."

How old? Was she pretty? Nicer? Where did she—

The light was green and it wasn't until the Buick behind me honked that I pressed the gas. "Butterflies are cool."

"I never understood them," She was exceptionally quiet. "I guess it's sort of cool, yeah. The idea of having a brand new start as something bigger and better. A metamorphosis, I think it's called."

"It is," I confirmed, thinking of the idea of a fresh start. I could use one of those. Everyone at one point could use one, some more than others, some more desperately than others. "A fresh start would be good."

"I'm taking her out to get a tattoo of a butterfly as a gift," She looked at me, a subtle step in the direction of friendship. "It's a good gift, right?"

She just asked my opinion. Sam, the most independent and hard-headed and opinionated girl to grace the earth with her presence just asked her supposed mortal enemy for his opinion. "Yeah—" I made a sharper right turn than I intended, in a fit of shock and a little bit of panic. "Yeah, totally."

"She broke away. She managed to get to start over as something better," I was starting to get a hunch that Sam was ripping open her metaphorical chest cavity and handing me a magnifying glass to let me take a good look. Her motives were unknown to me, and I was slowly accepting that she wasn't trying to be malicious. Sam Puckett was being real and honest on her own. I began to feel queasy.

Sam pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin against the tops of her kneecaps. Her breathing was easy and even, something rhythmic and surprisingly comforting. She was doing enough breathing for the both of us. "She's my twin sister and she out being a butterfly."

_Twin?_

Sam's a fucking twin. The independent and fierce girl who could stand alone whilst on fire and bleeding out was one half to one whole. A girl who had enough personality, strength, and character to conquer Hollywood, warfare, and the Olympics all at once had someone exactly like her out there, somewhere. It was hard for me to picture the same copy of blonde curls and intimidating demeanor existing inside the realm of normalcy at once. Then again, since when has Sam Puckett been normal?

Then it hit me. Twins shared a womb in the same mother for the same amount of time. She and her _twin _sister had to have been birthed on the same day. And if her sister's birthday was—

"Oh my god, Sam," For the third time in ten minutes, I almost crashed the damn car. "H-Happy birthday to you, too. "

I felt like scum. I was a bag of scum. A scumbag. I bitched my problems to her and ignored her in the midst of my own controversies and self-centered predicaments. It was her birthday—eighteenth, if I wasn't mistaken. She was an adult, hitting her milestone, and for some reason, she wasn't with Carly or her mom or out getting sprung, but with me in my car. And it took me a good hanful of minutes to realize it was her _birthday_. I was an ass.

"Uh, thanks," She finally said, pressing her forehead into her jeans-covered knees. "But don't mind the caterpillar."


	8. an update of sorts

Hey guys!

So I know you probably got an email alert saying this was a new chapter, so I'm terribly sorry that I might've gotten your hopes up. I just have a few things to say, so how about I jump right in?

Okay, first, this stupid story is _not _forgotten. I will stick it out until the end, even if it kills me. Actually, I have chapter eight kinda sorta ready to be posted, I just need to edit it and make it sound nice, all that boring stuff that I'm way too busy for… which brings me to number two.

I am so busy, like all the time. It's my junior year of high school, so I have to maintain a 4.0 this year for college applications, and it's already taking so much out of me. Plus, I have work and cheer and rehearsals and a bunch of prior commitments, and sadly, writing has been the least of my concerns. Well, I shouldn't say least of my concerns, but not my upmost priority, practically speaking.

And actually, I _have _been writing. A lot, considering how much alone time I have to sit down and type. But it's all garbage drabble stuff with typos and no concrete story line, so it's basically worthless.

Lastly, onto this story, _Evil Blonde_. I hate this story. I hate it so much. I like the overall plot I was working with, I like a few scenes and dialogue, but as a whole, it's just this awful debauchery and I am completely floored at the positive response it has somehow been getting. With that being said, and don't freak out at this, but I think I'm going to rewrite it. From start to finish. I want it to be in the iCarly universe, mostly, and I also need to fill in a few plot gaps and storyline errors. For my sake, mostly.

That's about all I have to say. Thank you so much for being a reader and for staying along this pitiful path I'm paving! I appreciate you (yes _you!_) so much and I love you from the bottom of my heart! You really don't have to reply to this, hell, you don't even have to read it, but I figured that this was the best way for me to directly speak to everyone. If and when I post chapter eight/the rewriting of chapter one, I'll just delete this update.

_Twitter: "at" sortasupersam_

Thank you so much again and I love you!

Samm :)


End file.
